FACTURE JUNE / 2 0 1 1
MICHEL CHION LIFE IN PROSE
I prefer the term “Concrete Music” rather than Acusmatic, even though it is the same thing, really. What I call Concrete Music, and the music made with fixed sounds, is independent from the original technical medium the sounds are originally recorded on...
Michel Chion (1947 Creil, France). Composer of “Musique Concrète” from INA-GRM, video and film maker, creator of “audio visual theatre” (La Messe de Terre), writer and teacher on film at the University of Paris III. Michel Chion has written a number of essays, most notably on Peter Schaeffer, and published several books on “Musique Concrète”, cinema and what he calls “acoulogie”. Life In Prose: Back in March 2011, Michel Chion performed a sold out premiere of La Vie en Prose at Cafe OTO, a Symphony of Energy in four movements. The Symphony follows a non narrative structure that alludes to the unfolding of time, a constant preoccupation in Chion’s work. It opens with a diluted allegro, or moderato Le chant des heures (Song of the Hours) that seems to give free reign to a foley artist playfully displaying his skills and delving into his archive of B-Movie sounds. This gives way to a prolonged scherzo Le souffle court (Short Breath) full of false beginnings that never find their natural resolution. There’s a tinge of the 1950s in the third movement, Dans la chambre (In the Bedroom), with a mother’s voice announcing the father’s return aer a long
day at work, thus tearing a page out of a domestic science hand-book. The movement unfolds as an adagio evoking the presence of two children, a boy and a girl, sleeping in the same room. “I’m not afraid of the dark” keeps repeating the young girl. The Symphony then ends with the dawn of a new day Salut au jour, starting off as a subdued allegro, which slowly gathers pace and recalls Walter Rutmann’s 1927 seminal film Berlin Symphony of a Great City. La vie en Prose is available June 2011 through Brocoli Does it still make sense to talk about “Acusmatic Music” in the digital era? MC: I prefer the term “Concrete Music” rather than Acusmatic, even though it is the same thing, really. What I call Concrete Music, and the music made with fixed sounds, is independent from the original technical medium the sounds are originally recorded on, be that a magnetic tape recorder or a PC. For my latest work, for instance, I use both a tape recorder and a computer. At cafe OTO, I presented an “Oeuvre”. For me a live concert is a way of presenting a piece of work, like a cinema screening, or an art show, but I give no real
importance to the performance itself. The ideal thing for me would be for people to have a chance to listen to the music several times in good conditions. What was your starting point as a composer? MC: I don’t really know why I wanted to be a composer when I was a young boy. It could be because my father had wanted to be a composer, but it could go back even further to my paternal grandmother who loved music. On a purely biographical level, though, there was a defining moment for me and that was my discovery of the music of Pierre Henry in the 60s. However, even though I studied to be a composer, I was soon to discover that I didn’t feel inclined to write musical scores. I didn’t have a problem listening to music, or playing music as such, but I found the act of writing down musical notes boring. What happened was that a music teacher friend of mine, asked me to write a short piece of concrete music for her pupils and within a day I discovered something I actually enjoyed doing. Also, I seemed to be good with tape recorders, so it was thanks to her that I started creating concrete music, it was by chance.
Concrete music and fixed sounds enable me to make sense of the unfolding of time, because, as I explained yesterday to someone, I have difficulty living in the here and now...
For the premiere of La vie en prose at cafe OTO you had the audience facing the “stage”, although what they were in fact looking at you referred to as the “menu” from your Symphony written down on a blackboard, while you were operating behind the listeners. What is your approach to a specific audience during one of your performances? MC: Ideally all listeners should be seated in the same spot, but that is not possible. In cinema, the mind compensates what it experiences on screen depending on the position where one is seated. During a live performance, the part of the audience sitting on the right hand side obviously hear better what I do on the right, but I try to balance things out taking the work in different directions so that eventually everybody has a similar experience, but that only happens at different points during the performance. In my performance at OTO, I used ten loudspeakers. Because people were sitting facing the “stage” there were six loudspeakers at the front, two on the sides and two at the back. I then asked for the two speakers at the back to be turned facing the wall in order to have a more indirect sound. I try to replicate the same experience for all listeners regardless of
where they are sitting, just as it happens in a circus where performers take into account spectators sitting on all sides. Are you a prisoner of sound? MC: That’s the title of a piece of mine I created back in 1972. Next year it will be its 40th anniversary! Yes I am a bit. For me it was a way of tackling with humour a problem I had of constructing a piece of work on a large scale. I felt I was a prisoner of a particular moment, so I dramatized my condition in order to escape it. Now I feel more fascinated by sound rather than a prisoner. Is it good to spend time with machines? MC: That is the title of another one of my works, “La machine à passer les temps”. When I chose this title, I was not thinking of the machine as a magnetic tape recorder, but as the work itself. Concrete music and fixed sounds enable me to make sense of the unfolding of time, because, as I explained yesterday to someone, I have difficulty living in the here and now. For this reason, I feel the need to create works that are firmly situated in time, not so much to regain time in a Proustian sense, but to reconstruct it as otherwise it destroys itself. Time for me is like a wall
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that keeps crumbling on all sides and creating a musical piece is a way for me to build something solid that does not fall apart. Can you stop regrets? MC: No. This again is the title of another piece of mine. The title is a parody of a French expression “You can’t stop progress”, but no, one should not try to stop regrets. Having said that, one should not be a prisoner of nostalgia and should not feel guilty. One has to accept that all human beings cannot be just one thing or the other. Therefore, we should accept everything in our lives, even pain. That is the role that art fulfils for me. One should put everything in art as art is a way for man to accept his own imperfections. I’m with Fellini on this one. In 8 and half, the main character of the film is a director who cannot make his film because he wants to put everything in it, including weaknesses, doubts, and impotence. I like this concept of art where man doesn’t idealize himself. One does not have to be a hero. Let us accept everything and try not to be diehard and uncompromising. One should not stop regrets, even though one cannot live in the past. - Gianmarco Delre
HISTORY OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC WEEK ONE
Weekly update on History of Electronic Music co-curation programme at the Science Museum… A few weeks ago I replied to a call for electronic musicians to co-curate a forthcoming exhibition at the Science Museum centred around Radiophonic Workshop co-founder Daphne Oram’s Oramics machine. I felt most honoured to be chosen as one of the 12 musicians who will work alongside two of the museum’s curators over 5 sessions, during which we will si through the museum’s archives and discuss ideas for the exhibition and related events. For the first session we met at the Science Museum stores in West London, a stunning and vast building that also houses collections from the V&A and British Museum. From synth fanatics to soware developers to sound artists, there is a good
mix of participants which has already proved to be fascinating in terms of the potential of this project. Even though we have relatively limited means, with such a range of interests and ideas on offer it looks promising that we will be able to put something together that will appeal to a wide audience. Although most of this session was of course taken up with getting to know one another we had a chance to see the Oramics machine itself, albeit wrapped up in plastic. It’s a fascinating machine comprised of two sections and a couple of amazing speakers (luckily, Oram lived in the countryside!). Unfortunately, as it turns out, the machine itself can’t be restored to working order without replacing so many parts that it wouldn’t be t h e s a m e i n s t r u m e n t a n y m o r e . Nevertheless it proves a brilliantly inventive piece for any electronic musician to see
and we also hope to be able to obtain sound samples from the archives for visitors to hear. Personally what I found so inspiring was that this machine has clearly been worked on over many years; bits being added as and when, all contained within odd bits of furniture and showing the determination to create new sounds through whatever means. This hands-on approach certainly grabs me a lot more than any amount of presets and plug-ins and for me always raises the question of current electronic music production – has it all got abit too easy and, in turn, less inventive? Due to the nature of the exhibition and the space available it will certainly be a challenge to make it interesting for us music geeks yet inviting enough for the majority of Science Museum visitors, so plenty to think about over the weekend.
HISTORY OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC WEEK TWO
Update on History of Electronic Music cocuration programme at the Science Museum, when week two at Blythe House involved us looking more in-depth at the processes involved in putting together an exhibition and finding out more about the work involved in keeping the museum’s objects in as good a condition as possible… Aer a brief chat amongst ourselves on our thoughts since last week, we formed three groups to focus on the exhibition seperately in terms of instruments, genres and artists. It soon became apparent that one feeds into the other and that there is no definitive way of trimming ideas down. However, it also turned out that there were consistent turning points across the three subjects – early electronics including tape music, synthesizers and computers. To me, this seems quite a clear cut way of organising the exhibition but with so many
options available it will be interesting to see where we end up. Part of the day was spent visiting the museum’s conservators. It was a fascinating insight into the decisions made about the preservation of objects and also very interesting to find out that no object is ever tested to find out whether it works or not. Given that music is so practical this somehow seems a shame regarding this project but, of course, the museum and its stores exist in order that these things are preserved purely as objects rather than as functional equipment or instruments. This was followed by a trip to the main store room for electronic music instruments which was full of Mellotrons, ancient synths and numerous other fascinating machines. Other objects of interest are nestled in larger rooms amongst vast racks of telephones,
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transmitters and the like. We also viewed Technical Reports on a range of electronic instruments which were intriguing documents filled with old operating manuals, notes on the condition of the instrument as well as correspondence relating to the object, where and who it had come from. As with last week, a brilliant insight into realms I never thought I’d be privy to and to be able to apply knowledge of certain areas whilst leaning so much from others is a rare opportunity. This sharing of ideas is something I consider to be of utmost importance to get across to the exhibition’s audience. We now have a week off so hopefully this will allow us to refine our ideas before the next session, I for one came away with a head full of thoughts to consider over the next week or so. - Katie English
SKURA COMPLETE WORKS
Skura is Proto-Germanic for “mark,” or “tally,” cousin to the English word score. In turn, a score is a soundtrack, or a group of twenty. Richard Skelton’s *SKURA marks a score of scores, or better, a single soundtrack that evolves over the course of twenty movements. There are twenty discs here, so the title is perfect, but not just that. Inspired. Those readers old enough to have listened to the vinyl format the first time around might not be comfortable with the expression “box set”, which is something David Bowie, Led Zeppelin or The Byrds should release. A box set is a reformatting and repackaging of material the buyer already owns (consider the flood of these reissues throughout the late 80s and early 90s, concurrent with the rise of the CD). Think then of *SKURA as a collection, not a repackaging. From the artist’s web site: …presented in a beautiful, hand-craed ash box with sliding glass panel. *SKURA gathers together the artist’s complete works to date – including all previously out-of-print editions published between 2005 and 2010. The collection is completed by a new album, *SKURA, which comprises nearly 60 minutes of new and unreleased recordings. For those readers unfamiliar with Richard Skelton’s work, know that a review does not simply introduce the newcomer with a single gesture. Skelton records openly under several aliases, each with a unique creative vantage. As he said in a 2009 interview with The Line Of Best Fit: “Hopefully you’ll agree that Rimusic is a different entity to Heidika, for example.” (He has referred to this impulse as a “taxonomy,” which is easily the best way you will hear it put.) Other projects include Carousell, Harlassen, A Broken Consort, Clouwbeck, and — only recently — one named “Richard Skelton.” Seven moods, seven introductions. Some of the incarnations occur infrequently, or only once (Rimusic), others are quite prolific (A Broken Consort). Maybe — as Skelton decants more flavors into this broth — we will be treated to a second *SKURA, a score of pseudonyms. Newcomers should know a few more things: first, he is fairly populist, both in his own aesthetic convictions, and in the way he is received by fans and music journalists. He has described his travel through “woods and fields” as “a spiritual reawakening — but one which had no reference to God or any specific religion.” He refers to an early, noncommercial distribution as “a blithe statement about consumerism.” And as interest in his work has gained momentum, he has continued to struggle against the anonymity of mass production. Normally this would be an esoteric, even ideological statement, but in Skelton’s case it is quite concrete. He has oen taken the concept of custom album packaging to its logical extreme, with limited runs of, say, 28 copies packaged together with seeds, dried leaves or other foraged materials. Of the Crow Autumn release, distributed by Tompkins Square in lieu of his own, private label, he says: And most difficult of all was the dilemma over turning something loaded with personal significance into a commodity, which the world
may consume, absorb or reject. In an economic and cultural climate where it’s difficult to obtain subsidy for art, and where creativity seems only to be valued in monetary terms, it’s a decision that many artists can be forgiven for making without thinking. As mentioned above, his reception establishes him as something of a people’s artist. Album reviews and profile pieces regularly lapse into the first person voice, as if Skelton has transcended (and eschewed) the aloof savant role for something more resembling, say, a close acquaintance, a personal correspondent. Articles routinely use the artist’s forename, not the surname, and it is clear that Skelton’s compositions involve the listener in ways that those of his contemporaries do not. This brings us to the other point you should know: the artist does not claim to be any kind of musical virtuoso. Quite the contrary: “it’s a miracle that I make music at all – it doesn’t come naturally. I’ve had to really persevere to get to a stage where I’m just pretty bad, instead of downright awful. Crap musicians of the world, unite, and take over.” The overused idiom about the creative process — the one that ends with the phrase “99 percent perspiration” — would seem totally at odds with Skelton’s own creativity. This is a man who would leave behind copies of field recordings, buried at their source, or leave his journal entries tucked under rocks. Skelton generates raw feed in improvised, outdoor sessions, using the West Pennine Moors as his unwalled studio. He has dedicated *SKURA and all of its component works to “Louise Skelton, 1975-2004.” So this would seem like an artist who leans disproportionately toward inspiration, not like one who emphasizes loops, edits and craing. But we should take him at his word. And we are better for it, besides. *SKURA: early works, before June 2007 The claim that any artist’s work improves with each successive release may seem careless, a cliché, or an overstatement. In Skelton’s case, it is none of those. Indeed, the reader should expect an evolution as dramatic as this, in light of his continued emphasis on method. By Disc Seven it is clear that we are dealing with an impressive talent. By Disc Fourteen, a true modern composer. But what, then, does this say about Disc One? The difference between Skelton’s older material and the more recent recordings is dramatic, to be sure, but not impossibly so. Radiohead could have put six more pseudonyms to good use by now. For purposes of this review, let us refer to Discs One through Six as Skelton’s “early” material, that is, anything that predates the first edition of Box Of Birch. By point of fact Disc One (There Is No Cure) reads like a true prologue, markedly different from anything else in Skelton’s arsenal. This is a place of guitar, violin and processing, andante pacing, and a considerable degree of restraint. Few reviews exist: the album was obscure in more than one sense of the word. But in retrospect it seems that these first 22 minutes represent the beginning of a search. Even more, There Is No Cure suggests that the artist was still learning how to search.
Thematically whole, exquisite in texture, aching, infectious, timeless...
The stride breaks into a sprint with Disc Three: the Harlassen release, titled A Way Now. The narrative of track titles, the title of the album itself, the heightened musical pulse, and the fact that Skelton employed the Harlassen pseudonym exactly once all suggest a transition point, a sort of resolution, both artistically and personally. We can only speculate about the details, but the result is a tension of kinetic energy and delicious anchoring: a car with both the accelerator and brake pedals jammed into the floorboard. The itch and ache of violin string becomes exotic dissonance, the heavy pluck of a guitar string doubles as a percussion strike. This is music shot through a macro lens. The only problematic disc among the first six is the last one: the selftitled premiere of Rimusic. Originally released in March 2007, Rimusic is a single, all-but-unnamed track, “No. 1.” Here are nearly 20 minutes of diffused light: strings and drone instruments chiming in concurrent, complementary, but unstructured melodies. This way “No. 1″ comes off as layered but patternless, although literally shimmering and very literally cascading (note also his reference to “the narrow stream” in the liner notes). What makes Rimusic difficult gives voice to the only conceivable criticism of *SKURA as a whole: for a project inspired by, and oen meant to simulate nature, there are very few storms. Listen instead to Disc Four, the first installment of Landings, issued under the Carousell mark in June 2006. Also a single, extended track, Landings 2006 is a slow, blackand-white, low-register portent. The distillment here is moody, menacing and hypnotic: the formation of a necessary storm, the polarization of light under heavy cloud cover. *SKURA: current works, from June 2007 Aer the Rimusic debut, Skelton released Box of Birch as A Broken Consort, probably the archetypal release in terms of his singular packaging ethic (an edition of 28, named literally: a box of birch). Moreover — for the listener who travels through *SKURA chronologically — Box of Birch is the point where we begin to recognize the Richard Skelton in his current incarnation: confident,
deliberate. Clearer in voice and style and intent. The Heidika responsible for There Is No Cure starkly different from the one who imprints Tide Of Bells & The Sea (Disc Ten). The composing is still mournful and challenging, but more rewarding with each successive release. Box of Birch track “Weight of Days,” for example, tells a moving narrative both textually and otherwise; a delicate, scarcelymoving, and reflective arrangement for violin and cello. As always, the natural world serves as both inspiration and audience. It is an eight-minute exploration into types of silence. Skelton’s more up-to-date works leave much more discernible wakes, and the reader is likely more familiar with, say, Black Swallow & Other Songs, From Which The River Rises, or the three-year anniversary sequel to Landings. Reviewing the first of those three (Disc Thirteen), Alex Gibson noted the “occasional chiming percussion, flickering guitar and field hiss” that “fade in and out through the persistent string work,” concluding, that the work is “weighty fare, and demands as much as it returns.” Of Clouwbeck’s From Which The River Rises (Disc Fieen), Michael Vitrano described “overwhelming strings piled over, on top and around one another, rushing in like the balanced undulations of a river,” stating unambiguously, “Skelton again triumphs.” The second incarnation of Landings (Disc Fourteen) needs truly little introduction, lauded nearly universally by those who have heard it. The listener would be forgiven for concluding that this is Skelton’s masterpiece: thematically whole, exquisite in texture, aching, infectious, timeless. For a collection that shares so much blood and root with the natural world, the violins never sound so alive as they do here. The breaths between sounds, the silences between tracks: never so urgent. It is difficult to resist the word culmination, even when it is not clear whether the artist has achieved more height, or depth, or gravity. There should be a new word, one that implies all three. With so much familiar water to navigate: let us not forget that there is also some new material to be had.
Alternate versions, pseudonyms, sequels, the moors, poetry, the beyond-tempo pacing, the timeless hum, the anguished violin and brittle guitar...
*SKURA, and a question “Wingless” (There Is No Cure), was previously unreleased. “Ford” (Marking Time), is “a newly commissioned piece.” Several tracks were hidden along the way, and revealed here in full. Dyad features three alternate versions of previously-released tracks. A Dead Bridges Into Dust was released in November 2005, and the first Landings album dropped in June 2006: both were limited to nine copies. It is certain that the listener will find plenty of new music in the first 19 albums, but the last is a full-length record of altogether original material: seven tracks, 57 minutes, four different faces of the taxonomy. The album opens with “Bark, Xylem,” by Heidika (that the *SKURA disc features four pseudonyms, a “Part Two” and an alternate version suggests that these songs are drawn from earlier sessions, and not necessarily composed since, say, February 2010). “Bark” is not out of place, to be sure. A hazy violin and ringing guitar put sound to the two propositions of the song title. Skelton names nothing accidentally, so the interested reader should note that xylem is a vascular tissue in some plants, similar to veins in animals, although in this case the lifeblood is a stream of fluid and nutrients. The song moves in scarcely-perceptible waves, and quietly nourishes. “Proximity” is aptly titled. This Carousell arrangement features an inthe-same-room lead violin, turbulent cello flooring, and disengaged swells of cymbal. The listener can only wonder if Skelton gets enough credit: a track like this from a lesser-known artist would
make the album. *SKURA ends with “The River Beneath,” nearly 20 minutes of A Broken Consort, likely the most fascinating of Skelton’s seven aliases. It is an optimistic turn, telling piano notes placed barely within view from one another, among hectares of strings, cymbal, and near-hidden processing. This is a fitting last chapter, perhaps a vow for a change of direction going forward. So here is the question: is it all too much? *SKURA represents 20 discs, over 90 tracks, no fewer than 20 songs exceeding 10 minutes in length, including one that exceeds 35 minutes. The reprises, the alternate versions, the pseudonyms, the sequels, the moors, the poetry, the beyond-tempo pacing, the timeless hum, the anguished violin and brittle guitar: is it overwhelming? It is a fair question, asking whether *SKURA becomes excessive. The best wine comes in a five-ounce pour, not a gallon jug. Any steak worth eating, a six-ounce, maybe eight-ounce cut. Is 12 hours of any one artist simply too much? No. Quite the contrary, especially for the newcomers. Comparing *SKURA to food or drink, for example, poses a false dichotomy where small amounts signal refinement, and where larger quantities verge into excess. Think of it instead as a place, a great forest, maybe, meant for stealing away, getting lost, reflecting, and being found again. The larger the place, the better the chances for becoming mislaid. The more exhilarating the return, or the state of being returned, or not. - Fred Nolan
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DONATO WHARTON A WHITE RAINBOW SPANNING THE DARK
What is beauty if not the involuntary giving away of what is hidden even from ourselves?
A limber tone begins an incredible work by Donato Wharton, flittering and flaying in an obsequious manner, fading out slowly with a gentle throb, before a more powerful tone takes over. The invasive overlap charges up the, otherwise, ominous beginning, and precedes a work that slowly seeps into your consciousness. Reading ‘A Book of Memories’ by Peter Nadas, I came across this quote that perfectly encapsulates my experience with this album: “What is beauty if not the involuntary giving away of what is hidden even from ourselves?” There seems to be a hidden world pervading Wharton’s work, and only aer spending a couple weeks with it was I able to escape my selfimposed seclusion with the record and try to put words to the effect it had on me. Presenting a work that evokes the sense of being in transit, Wharton begins in stasis, examining “A Vast White Solitude” in the midst of a hurried world. I imagine the busyness and noise constantly revolving around us, people hurrying from one place to another, so that life becomes a series a destinations that we are always speeding to get to. The act of slowing down and
projecting our solitude onto the world around us, inviting others to share in the space, allows for an examination or focus on the hidden, the unlikely, the in-between. In effect, I find solitude as a respite to the noise and clatter of the world around me, and to imagine this solitude helps to alleviate being a participant in our sped-up world. Whether or not these are Wharton’s sentiments, I don’t know, but I find solitude to be an enlightening prospect, especially in the face of a claustrophobic world. When the pinprick notes emerge in “Ink Mountains”, I felt assured of the wonder I was experiencing, and the notes reaffirmed my understanding of what was happening, on the images I was seeing, and the “hidden” that was beginning to reveal itself. The shadow that danced its slow, meaningful dance on “A Vast White Solitude”, peaking ‘round a corner, submerged in grey, glistened in the gentle rays of sunlight where beauty is sure to be found. While this notion becomes much more apparent on “Ink Mountains”, being caught unawares of hidden beauty happens on every track. The whirling tones unfurling on “A Thousand Miles of Grass” speak volumes, and it is at this finer
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moments where I am ready to give myself over entirely. Listening at home, away from distraction, I happened to at one point drop what I was doing and sit transfixed at how small a moment I was experiencing. As if the sounds would only pick themselves out of the mass for a millisecond and I was noticing one significant moment in such a short span of time. I felt lucky. I imagine for every album and for every sliver of sound, time moves and we dri along with it, swaying along a parallel plane. But, once in a while, a listener is treated to this complete slow down, of not charging to the destination, or where the sound goes, but where it exists at one point and never again. This splendid release is available on limited 10” vinyl and digital download through the wonderful Serein label and is part of the ‘Seasons’ project: A series of four 10″ vinyl records to be released over the course of the year, limited to 500 for the world, pressed on heavyweight vinyl and housed in hand-numbered outer sleeves. The project also features Colorlist, Nest and Hauschka. - Michael Vitrano
DANIEL W J MACKENZIE TEETH SLEEP UNDER WINKING BLACK EYELID
This enigmatic investigation reveals an avant-garde gamut of prevailing acoustic possibilities that are produced when pianos are physically manipulated with tangible entities, hardware effects and post-production processing
Daniel W J Mackenzie eschews the filmic freedom and concentrated consistency that is usually associated with the output of his alter ego, Ekca Liena, in order to create an extraordinary proposal that is titled Teeth Sleep Under Winking Black Eyelid… This recording intends to challenge the listener with its use of contrived footage from two pianos that are abstractly arranged, performed and engineered to create intriguing instances of instrumentational incomprehension. Recognisable resonances are juxtaposed with primed piano proclamations and other mutated musical methodologies. This enigmatic investigation reveals an avant-garde gamut of prevailing acoustic possibilities that are produced when pianos are physically manipulated with tangible entities, hardware effects and post-production processing. Undercro Prelude is a superficial piano motif that acts as the ‘control’ element in these perplexing piano experiments. Recorded at his home and at Brighton’s Under The Bridge Studios, Mackenzie creates genius loci; an auditory architectural anchor for the listener, this ‘safe’ point of reference may be required for reassurance later on as this eccentric excursion into hammered string strangeness progresses. Disorientation Suite has a five second intro of ‘motorik’ fuzz that precedes a minimal and determined piano refrain that scale surfs to create aural anxiety. A swollen forewarning proliferates before we are exposed to antecedent elements of the rhythmic regressions, chaotic clamour and
theoretical timbres that are ultimately discharged by the nucleus of this unorthodox opus.
certainly has an oriental sound and that sense of tranquillity that is associated with traditional Eastern beliefs.
Our Sentiments Alignment is circles of reflective piano, nostalgic note echoes, sheets of shiable sustain and hauntingly stressed silences. Heavily distorted string manipulations and frictional processing techniques guide this taut emotive exercise. Miniature For Said Sentiments is a 30 second piano outro that complements its predecessor.
A piano free Vamp while not necessarily beautiful has a certain allure with its arousing pulsed heartbeat that blatantly sets out to appeal like a heartless, maneating seductress.
Hrisen has a transfigured riff of diffused snare brush percussion at its heart. Mutated wind and percussion illustrations, chronometric piano clang and, bass bursts mix and match, as poignant piano droplets blow by only to instantly distort and decay as an expressive ether condenses. A d d e n d u m fl a t t e r s H r i s e n w i t h a fragmentary self-recollection warp that palpably persists. Teeth Sleep I, Teeth Sleep ii, and Teeth Sleep iii combine to form a connected triptych. An irregular effects ensemble is coupled with piano chord cycles, illusionary string exploitations and misleading malfunctions to create a semiotic vision of fanged somnolance. Pulsed alienating ambiance, pervasive percussion, low frequency fluctuations and agonised strings ultimately give way to an obtuse yet convalescent composure with a dronish undertow. In Chinese mythology the crane is a bird of immortality and is strongly identified with the attributes of long life, happiness and a smoothness of flight. Crane Temple
Initially available only as a self-release by emailing Daniel here
Confound indicates the beginning of the piano’s reappearance. It sounds mysterious and puzzling, as though there has been a mix up or confusion between the forces of good and bad, perhaps a defeat or even damnation is suggested. Bathysphere Interlude is a brief deep-sea observation where the piano loses a battle with an all engulfing tidal wave of bass. Into is a cover of ‘Into The Wind’, a song by Mackenzie’s other persona Ekca Liena. It’s a song of contemplation that employs melancholic piano to mimic the fragility of human existence. Take Any Form But Don’t Leave Me is a literary reference from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and like the book the song speaks of betrayal, hate, death and love. It’s the final song and it alludes to the nature of a paroxysmal attack, a short psychotic episode that oen precedes a descent into the abyss. Teeth Sleep Under Winking Black Eyelid is an original exploratory piano philosophy of intense intimacy and lugubrious humility. - Dean Rocker
BON IVER S/T
The first thing that stands out about Bon Iver’s self titled new album is the lushness of the production…. It’s remarkably warm and inviting. But boy is it busy. I’m not saying that the kitchen sink is in the mix somewhere (though subsequent listens may prove this true), but there’s a hell of a lot going on in there. Just a cursory listen brings up saxes, trumpets, military drums, padded drums, tiny bells, bicycle bells, wind chimes, hand claps, pedal steel, banjo, as well as all the usual suspects – there’s even what sounds to me like a squeaky toy at the end of the opening track Perth. I was listening to this on headphones the other day as I wandered the back streets of Peckham, when halfway through Holocene a car alarm started wailing and I just assumed that it was on the track and that I was supposed to be hearing it. How Justin Vernon manages to have all this stuff on there and not make it sound cluttered and claustrophobic is an achievement in itself. But I can’t help wondering whether it’s all really necessary. Just because you have a saxophone lying around the studio, does it mean you have to use it? I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with it, I’m just not sure if it serves any real purpose. But then I didn’t sell over a quarter of a million copies of my last album in the United States alone, did I? Perhaps it’s got something to do with this success and Vernon’s subsequent position of the past couple of years, you know, as the indie darling with the Midas touch, hanging with Kanye West, phone calls from Neil Young… I might be doing him a great disservice, but all I’m saying is it sometimes feels as if he thought, “Well, the E Street Band had a horn section, why don’t we give it a go?” Of course, he doesn’t use it in the same bombastic manner; Bon Iver, Bon Iver, is far too sedate for that, and I don’t mean that to sound bad, it’s just this album never really takes off. It doesn’t exactly rock. Not like the Boss, at least. No, this is a much gentler affair. A bright, shining gem constructed of myriad highly polished layers of sound and multi-tracked vocals; there’s plenty of “oohs” and “ahs” and Beach Boys-like harmonies here, but there’s also a lot of late 70s/80s so-rock MOR action going on too – yes that’s right, like Chicago, or… Band of Horses. It’s got to be said there are times, such as on Minnesota, WI, when it all sounds more Baker Street than E-Street. What this obsession with that period’s sound is all about, I don’t know. But it’s clear that that rich, sumptuous production is all the rage at the moment (check out Gayngs, Destroyer et al). Again that’s not necessarily a criticism; the sound here is so refined, it’s almost exquisite in parts. Much of the drive-time flavour of Bon Iver, Bon Iver, however, stems from the dated keyboard sound; at times it’s like you’re listening to The Cars or something like that. You know that Live Aid tune about the starving children. Weirdly, the very 00s auto-tuned vocals that crop up here and there add to this nostalgia trip; the midnight sax merely the cherry on top. Listen to Beth/Rest and realise this: Ferris Bueller would have loved this new Bon Iver album. As would Patrick Bateman. It’s very accomplished is all I’m saying. Smooth. Don’t get me wrong, those who liked For Emma, Forever Ago, will not be hugely disappointed. But I’m afraid I can’t see this being lauded with such lavish praise. I realise how easy, and how predictable, it is to trash talk the follow-up record to any critically
exalted album, and I really don’t want to do this. And the truth is this is not a bad album. Far from it – it’s charming and slick, in places it’s as seductive as the sun seeping through the branches. It’s just… I don’t know. Then again, I couldn’t quite understand why For Emma, Forever Ago met such universal acclaim. I’m not sure Vernon understands either, and I imagine that the past few years have been a bit of a headfuck. I mean, seriously. A girl broke his heart, he moved to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, grew a beard and wrote a bunch of songs about said breaking of his heart and the girl who wielded the hammer. (Alright, I know he denies that this is what happened, but do you really believe that?) The next thing he knows, these quiet, intimate songs are being listened to by millions of people all around the world. Think about it. Millions of strangers take your heartache and make it their own, turn your misery into adulation. And before you know it you’re sharing a stage with Kanye West. No wonder he’s got a horn section on his new record! It’s perhaps more surprising that Kanye West isn’t playing a flute solo here. Come on, Kanye! Where are you? If you look at it in these terms, what was Vernon supposed to do? He can’t produce For Emma, Forever Ago part two. Presumably for one, because he’s spent the past three years yo-yoing around the globe singing his songs of sorrow to adoring strangers and therefore hasn’t had the chance to get his heart all broken again, or if he has, he’s certainly not had the time to stick the thousand tiny beating pieces under the microscope to examine in quite the same way that he did when he locked himself in that cabin all those years ago. But also, if he churns out another version of For Emma… then it means he hasn’t moved on or progressed as an artist. It’s that age-old dilemma that musicians face. They spend their whole life writing their first album, putting their everything into making it, but then are expected to do it again. Only different. And somehow better. Because they’ve now got a million strangers hanging on their every move. No pressure there then. In this context, Bon Iver, Bon Iver is almost perfect. For it takes what was there before and expands it. If we stick with the theme that runs through this album (many of the tracks are named aer places), and think of For Emma… as Texas, then Bon Iver, Bon Iver, don’t mess with it. Yet crucially it also doesn’t ignore it. It remains true to its spirit; it simply embellishes it. I’m not saying that Justin Vernon has stuck a few shiny stones and coloured beads on to the state of Texas, well, not exactly, but… The beauty is still there in the music, it’s just dressed in more expensive clothes this time. More importantly though – and I think this has much to do with the previous album’s appeal – Vernon’s honey-sweet falsetto is still there. It doesn’t even seem to matter what he’s singing (“armour let it through, borne the arboretic truth you kept posing,” anyone?) just that he sings. There’s so much warmth and intimacy in Vernon’s voice that meaning is almost rendered superfluous. Fact is: the boy’s got soul. My only concern is that he might just have soul the same way that Chris Martin’s got soul. Ouch! There, I’ve said it. It’s a bit like Coldplay. It’ll probably sell millions. - Graham Seon
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THE TRUTH HURTS IAN HAWGOOD & BROCK VAN WEY
It’s not a surprise that any collaboration between these two would be one of the musical highlights of the year; in fact, given the pedigree involved, it would almost be expected. What the real surprise is, however, is the deeply moving nature of it. “The Truth Hurts” has woven into itself that rarest of elements – a genuine emotional core; a fiercely beating heart amongst its magnificent sound design and abundant musical ideas. The distant guitars, swooping keys and pulsing vocal loops of opener ‘Nothing You Want Will Ever Come True’ are hard to describe – like a radio dial stuck halfway between stations, with a constantly wavering focus between drone and evocative vocals, and occasional pulses of shuddering bottom end. The swing between these two points is the artistic tension behind the record, presumably, and it is underpinned by what appears to be genuine friendship between two likeminded old souls. That the project emerged during a period of upheaval for both participants seems to give it the singular quality of a lost document; a tangible embodiment of post disaster upheaval – material worked on for years, then filtered out through two sets of hands – each molding it with their own unique perspective on catharsis. Fluid was lucky enough to be able to catch up with both Brock and Ian for a rare chat about a project between 12 years and 3 months in the making, spanning continents and lives. ............. The proceeds from the record are going to worthy causes – what can you tell us about Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support (JEARS), and Direct Help for Victims and Animals Rejected from Shelters? Ian: My wife is currently working with both the Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support organisation (JEARS) in Sendai
and surrounding areas, as well as the Direct Help for Victims and Animals Rejected from Shelters in Japan group. JEARS was formed by three animal charities in Japan and is working incredibly hard to save and care for animals in the affected areas. They have a ‘no kill’ policy, which might seem pretty obvious to many outside Japan, but sadly the government, in its infinite wisdom, is collecting animals that are stray in the areas, and within a very short space of time they are basically killed. Its an enormous issue as many who were evacuated were not allowed to bring pets to centres for example, so they are going home to try to rebuild to be told their animal has been put down. When the area needs strong emotional support, this is just awful obviously and psychologically very damaging if you want to look at the human angle alone. JEARS are running around finding strays and keeping them in animal care homes, as well as foster homes (including my own house which has become a mini-farm!) and trying to find their owners. They are even quickly going to centres with a kill policy to pick up the animals so they are safe. Our newbie Susie would be dead if it wasn’t for the JEARS team saving her for example. My wife lived just outside Sendai for two years so felt compelled to go and help up there. She has since organised a house she manages for JEARS, which directs volunteers to areas, houses pets before they are fostered and works as a base for the area. Direct Help for Victims and Animals Rejected from Shelters in Japan is a very small Japanese group who are going up to areas not receiving government support for food, water, basic supplies, as well as rebuilding and cleaning up. My wife actually went up with them to work for JEARS, but ended up working with them to see what they do. The work is direct and truly amazing as they quite literally supply food and goods, as well as helping to tidy up, restock and provide any needed assistance. By this means they are able to transport food, clothing and aid directly almost every other weekend and during
holidays to areas which are not getting enough or any support. The truth is these are 100% direct and managed properly on a small-scale so they are able to have a very visible impact unlike larger charities where the money is focused on government or council affiliated programs, and not used immediately or to particularly good effect. You really have no idea what or where the money is going to, if at all and its rather embarrassing that people haven’t really done enough research into such things before donating huge sums of money, which could be used much more efficiently. Brock and I both agreed that this was the best way to help and donate, and rather than make a fuss over it, support quietly in the true Japanese spirit. JEARS and DHVARS are the same charities being supported by the new KANSHIN compilation, is that right? I think you’re right in saying that most people wouldn’t have any tangible idea of how their donation were used with larger charities; given that you are actually on the ground there and are able to say directly, can you give people an specific idea of how these charities operate? What are the ongoing costs, how many animals are involved, how many people work for the organisations, etc? Ian: Yes that is correct. Basically Jonathan and Dan knew we had been personally hit of course and wanted to help out. The future of the labels was a bit precarious for a couple of days until I got my head around everything and the guys wanted to support. Its pretty amazing that so many artists were willing to support so readily really and very heart-warming. I then spoke to Jonathan a little bit and he basically told me that he trusted me to use any donations as I saw fit. Jonathan actually gave us 100% of Hibernate sales for the month, which we then used to buy a lot of baby stuff such as nappies, food etc and took them up to evacuation centres.
I think its fair to say our approach to music is pretty different, but perhaps the music is focused on similar emotions in some ways, and very openly as well
I think given that there are a lot of Japanese labels, artists and stores donating, the ‘tangible’ is pretty obvious if they just tried to commit in a real way. However, yes, I suppose people outside the situation may not fully comprehend where the money is going, or not going, as the case seems to be. I can give a personal response for this quite simply though. Every other weekend or so, my wife drives up from our home (a couple of hours north of Tokyo) to Sendai where she manages a house used for volunteers. Of course, volunteers need cars, drivers, and sometimes-Japanese speakers on a basic level. People have been coming in from the States as well as from different parts of Japan. I am not sure how many are on the ground right now as its constantly changing given holidays etc, but I know that there are usually about 20 as a minimum in Japan plus people working in the States too. Its micro-managed so they cover a lot more ground than a larger charity would by comparison. Due to the difficulty of accommodation and all sorts of red tape, they will have to drive for hours a day to different centres to check on people who are looking for pets, search for animals (there are a lot roaming the streets in Fukushima in particular) and check on those people who have pets but cannot get enough food for them. My wife is on the phone all the time as well just trying to sort out where the animals can be sheltered. Some of the pictures I have seen and stories I have heard are truly disturbing and so much more could be done. As for DHVARS, its literally a husband and wife team with some volunteers my wife knows, who are driving up with supplies and spending any free time they have helping people out, cleaning, buying food or bringing it in. The truth is that the larger charities will eventually support the worst hit areas, as will the government. These are places where the destruction is total and the clear up is immense. However, thousands of people are being ignored and le to fend for themselves in areas that were not wiped out. Of course the shocking scenes mean that places that deserve the most attention get it, but being at the expensive of other areas is
ridiculous. There is a lack of food and supplies and as just small towns with not as much damage but not running water etc, they are in serious need. Their resolve is amazing and the ‘stiff-upper lip’ makes me proud to live in this country. You can get more information about what these amazing guys are doing here: www.silvervine.net/volunteer.html On a personal level, did you suffer damage at your property/studio? Ian: Well, yeah. We were actually sorting out our visas at immigration at the time and had le our dog and hamster at home. When we eventually made it home (we rushed but ended up on a bit of a long taxi journey given that everything came to a standstill), I had to go into the house first as we were seriously worried about our pets, especially as our drive had cracked open a bit by the time we got there. Our neighbours were outside checking if we were ok and quite amazingly, our dog was ok, albeit shaken up and surrounded by broken glass, kitchenware and large shelving. Our hamster’s cage had been a bit crushed under one of my large CD racks landing on her, but she was ok albeit stayed in her little house and refused to come out for days! We’d only just moved so we had shelves everywhere and my studio was in a bit of a mess anyway as I hadn’t had time to sort it out. I’d also ordered in a lot of gear for mastering from home as I was moving from studio work to working at home in Japan and had been saving up for that for the best part of three years. Most of it had arrived that week actually and me being I, I had taken it all out of the boxes and just stuck them loosely on my workspaces, so I lost speakers and poorly placed outboard gear so I only have myself to blame. I also lost about 5 hard drives, some of which weren’t backed-up (yeah, I know) and included projects I had been working on for days, months and years. Its just weird as some people near us lost just a few glasses, others had houses very badly damaged depending on the exact position of their house and possessions. But honestly, we were so lucky compared to others and once we realised what was happening in
regards to the tsunami, it put everything into perspective really. The most important thing is that we were all safe and all together, and able to try to find out how are friends further north were doing. How did the project come about? Ian: I think I approached Brock about the idea of it during one of our many emails back and forth a little bit aer the release of Tribes at the Temple of Silence. I set out the year aer completing Snow Roads to be a year of collaboration, which ended up being over 2 years and continuous in most cases as its something that has been very different and more enjoyable than working on my own. Most of the other projects are with old friends, people I have known and worked with for a while or people who have approached me whom I respect and get on well with. To be totally honest, I only loosely approached Brock aer getting to really know him as I knew that something together would be pretty emotionally charged. I think its fair to say our approach to music is pretty different, but perhaps the music is focused on similar emotions in some ways, and very openly as well. Over time I just got to realize that Brock and I were very similar in our innocence towards music, and the purity that should be within the voice used. I don’t ask anyone unless I massively respect them on a professional and personal level, and I am a nightmare to work with usually. I get a bit caught up with things and obsessive about the stupidest details, so whilst I know I can put certain people through that, I didn’t want to put Brock through that, if he even wanted to work together. But then we got to a level personally where it was very much a case of ‘let’s see how it pans out’. I knew with Brock it would be all or nothing, so to get to that point I really had to trust him and he me. It started with an open honest assessment of who I was, we were, and the emotions therein, and Brock just responded to those emotions and nurtured them with enormous care and love, as abstract as that sounds. So, the project came about aer speaking to each other a lot over a couple of years, and really, just becoming very close friends.
Brock: It came about at the kind offer of Ian, who brought up the idea. I’m generally quite opposed to the idea of collaborations and so rarely agree to them, for one because to me music is a very individual experience, and also because quite frankly I rarely see how anything about anyone else’s vision could intertwine with my own, but when Ian contacted me, I was on board immediately. As trite as it likely sounds, I’m a massive long-time fan of his music, but much more importantly, in the time I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know him in recent years, I’ve had the honor of being able to call him a real friend. He is quite simply one of the only true and honest people le in this music… so full of real and true love for what it stands for and always has, and someone who actually speaks with their music… who actually has something to say, and isn’t afraid to say it… to let the world judge the depths of his heart. So when he contacted me and asked if I would want to do a collaboration, I didn’t even have to think about it. Even though I’m a stubborn prick who really wouldn’t even want to work with myself if given the weird science fiction chance, I knew that together we could make something special – something that would be a truly meaningful melding of both of our hearts and minds, not just some hapless attempt to smash two people’s music together. I know that though our styles are extremely unique from each other and we take a very different approach to expressing ourselves, the place our music comes from, and what we are trying to convey, is oen very much the same, so I knew that together we could create something that alone neither one of us would arrive at – which I guess is the whole point of a collaboration. The personal connection between us and our friendship played a massive role not only in the decision to do it, but in the music itself as well. For me I would never do such a thing with someone I didn’t have the ultimate respect for, or someone I considered a personal friend, as music is far too intimate and important to be played with. It’s not a game. So in working on the album, my contribution consists of both narratives on the themes at hand that comprise the majority of both of our work – loneliness, isolation, regret, sadness, but also hope, beauty and strength – but is also a kind of imaginary dialogue with Ian himself (though one-sided, so I guess that’s not a dialogue), and a way to pay tribute to what he’s done, and what he stands for. The result was, and I’m risking
sounding trite again, something that was worlds beyond what either of us expected, I think, and I can only hope people love it as much as we do. Was there a discussion beforehand of the element of sound you were aiming for, or did it develop over the course of the project? Brock: There was zero discussion, which is what I love about it. Personally I have never sat down to make any piece of music and had even a semblance of what I want it to sound like. I only have an emotion or experience I need to get out, and the track builds itself around that, basically on autopilot. I honestly don’t know how Ian works on his own, but the great thing is, he never brought up any pre-conceived notions of what he wanted anything to sound like. Instead, he presented me with his own emotional sketches and travelogues, and knew that I would understand what I needed to understand, and do what I needed to do. At hopefully my last risk of sounding trite, there was an incredible unspoken bond between us for the whole project from start to finish; there was really never any need to speak. We let our music do the speaking. The sound developed totally on its own, until it was done, and we could sit back and listen, both realizing that in the end, it couldn’t possibly have been said better. It also so happened that on my end, my music for the collaboration came from probably the worst depression I’ve dealt with in recent memory. This was far beyond the kind that sparks creativity – this was the kind that makes you stop caring whether you live or die. I could find meaning in nothing. Not even music. For me, it definitely seemed the end wasn’t far off. Then I got this email from Ian, and I know it sounds super lame, but it was an amazing ray of sunshine that couldn’t have come at a better time. I decided to channel the torture of the previous months in some way into the album, which was quite difficult, as it was such a stark and blank void, but one that at its core had a myriad of issues that needed to be explored and addressed if my life was to continue. So I threw it all into the music, and the end results are really the most raw and intense pieces of ambient I’ve ever had anything to do with, and ones that deal with a larger number of issues at one time than anything I’ve attempted to before. The strangest thing was, when it was all said and done, Ian heard every last thing I was trying to say, and vice versa. Through his 12 years of recordings he made an
ocean away, and my obsessive outpour over several months while sitting across the East China Sea, it turned out we had been trying to say the same thing, about all the same things. For me this was the most amazing thing about the collaboration… I don’t see how the concept of working together could have been any more b e a u t i f u l l y e x e m p l i fi e d , o r m o r e worthwhile. Through our oen-tortured expressions of the loneliness of existence, we found we were far from alone… and in that found the beauty I know we both cling to, even in our darkest hours. Ian: Nope, none. Depending on the work at hand, I will either map things out for ages or will just go with whatever comes out naturally. I like both approaches really but my last proper record (‘Snow Roads’) was super mapped out, as have collaborations over the past couple of years been, so I just wanted to leave it open to anything really. Also, perhaps as more of a highly personal collaboration we both felt that the immediacy of straight up development would be more representative of what we wanted to do and who we are as friends. At the time I brought up the idea I was actually pretty burned from work and labeldom, I had been running incredibly low on energy and had taken some time off recording anything at all as things felt a little stunted. I then had this odd feeling one day that I should ask Brock if he would like to work on something musically together. It wasn’t because it seemed a natural fit or development for us, which it did of course, but I actually felt that it was something both of us needed at the time. I just had this sensation that something done together would be cathartic somehow, and I wasn’t wrong. The whole process has healed me immensely. On the day I found out certain things about our financial situation aer the quake, we were staying in a hotel and dealing with all sorts of media wildness in regards to the quake which made everyone around us go crazy, Brock sent me the final edits of the tracks. I went into the bathroom and just cried my eyes out aer hearing the first three tracks, because aer all these years of working alone, in bands or collaborations, it was as if someone had turned on the lights and illuminated who I was and who I was to them, and thus who we were. The tracks weren’t just pieces about depression and isolation, which I have always felt in a way, they were about the beauty within and the music had become so much more than the sum of its parts. It was incredibly powerful to hear this development, and from a point of ‘well let’s see what we come up with’, quite remarkable.
Brock, I think you’re right, broadly, when you say it’s difficult to find integrity in the music industry. Has this project given you a more optimistic outlook on that aspect, or do you think the trend is worsening? Brock: Like with anything really, my views on that are pretty complex, and even conflicting. This project definitely renewed a massive amount of hope and inspiration in me, not only musically, but personally, as being able to do something together with Ian really took me back to the days when music was such a pure and magical thing, and was a real reminder that at least some people still truly love music for the right reasons. And when I say ‘love,’ I mean a love you’ll actually fight for. It’s easy to say you love something, but a world apart to really lay it all on the line – emotionally, physically, monetarily, and everything inbetween. Yeah electronic music is generally a quite singular event, in that it is usually made by one person and centered around their personal feelings or viewpoint – which is why it makes it all the more beautiful when others can feel where a piece of music is coming from. But the lineage of electronic music from its foundations to its ‘progress’ over the years always depended on a community of people and the symbiotic relationship music and that community had. Now it’s so fragmented and insular and fueled by egomania, it’s gone from being a uniquely individual art form that somehow lent itself to being shared by others, to just being selfish, and full of selfish pricks. And when people are selfish, they don’t care who they hurt to get what they want. Though there are more people than ever ‘involved’ in electronic music nowadays, and so it would appear that more people than ever are laying it on the line, giving it all for love, etc, sadly the converse is true. Most are just doing it to stroke their own ego, plain and simple. And so, unfortunately, to me the trend is worsening, and I don’t think it will ever pull out of the tailspin it’s in. Wrestling with that fact has caused me to nearly leave it all behind more times than I can count, and besides the enormously kind support of so many amazing fans, the love of three people – Mike Oliver, Steve Hitchell, and in recent years Ian Hawgood, has been the only thing that’s kept me from leaping off the ledge. And so in that sense, to be able to do something with Ian of this nature was such a meaningful and unforgettable experience for me I will never be able to properly put it into words. So while yes I do believe the trend is worsening and I mostly find the modern age of electronic music sickening and abhorrent, I guess that
makes the beautiful moments all the more beautiful. The beautiful moments are still there – and I’m thankful for every one, because aer such a tumultuous and oen heartbreaking relationship with electronic music over the past 20-plus years, the fact is, though so many times I’ve tried to cast it from my life to avoid being consumed by its Sisyphean clutches, it is my life – and without it, I’d stop living. Was “Tribes…” the point where your paths crossed, or had you known each other professionally before that? Brock: It was the point our paths officially crossed I guess, in the musical/ professional sense, but not the first time we had ever spoken. We were actually introduced to each other by a mutual friend Mike (Oliver), one of my best friends, of Smallfish fame, who contacted me and said there was this guy Ian I had to meet – a solid, straight up cat who he recommended personally. For me the latter was all I needed to know. For many years, there wasn’t a person in the music world I would say a word to without running them through Mike first. He’s the man x10, and his word is gospel as far as I’m concerned. If he says you’re solid, you’re solid. That’s it. Especially since he knows my general hatred of people, and distaste for communicating with them. So I said ok, we started talking, and I realized why Mike had praised Ian to the heavens. I could see right off the bat he was a straight up, honest dude who just loved music with no other dirty ulterior motive. Not only could I feel it from his words, but also I could hear it in his music. So we kicked off a sort of email friendship, and he kindly invited me to make an album for Home Normal. I think what sealed the deal for me on knowing he was all about the love was when I asked him if he had any specific type of music or direction he was looking for (because that always puts me off) and he said he just wanted music from the heart, that he could feel. It didn’t matter what form it took. I knew at that point that this dude was for real, and so I set about making the album, which was completely different from anything that had been on Home Normal before, and which I frankly was concerned would be too different. But he loved it as much as I did, and soon aer it became part of the Home Normal story – a story I’m extremely honored to be a small part of. Ian: We’d spoken quite a bit before ‘Tribes…’ I think Mike had maybe recommended my work to Brock and Brock’s to me, so I was very aware of Brock of course, and how much he meant to
Mike musically and personally. Mike and I are super close and always meet up when I go back to the UK (not so much these days sadly). And he just adores Brock on every level imaginable. If you really get to know someone like Mike, well its a privilege as its hard to know a more open and beautiful soul really, and if he says that someone is the bees knees then you take it as fact. To be honest though, I didn’t (and don’t) like reaching out to people I don’t know, and I know this is the same for Brock, so it took Mike some serious prompting for us to finally get in touch. Since we did, well its bloomed into one of those incredibly rare and close friendships in life, despite the geographical distance. I think we very quickly agreed that Brock would do a record for Home Normal and so it went from there really on a professional level. How long did the album take to complete? Brock: My sense of space and time is mediocre to say the least, but I think a couple months. It pretty much consumed my life, and there were days I worked on it literally from when I got up to when I went to bed. In some parts it was quite challenging to work with someone else’s material for a myriad of reasons, both because it’s oen not as you would make it (obviously) or even in keys you would normally play, and most of all you always want to make sure you’re doing justice to what they’ve done, and what they’re trying to express. It can be quite complicated and in some points was much more time and effort-consuming than working on a solo project, but the end result was worth every second, as far as I’m concerned. Ian: This is a tough question as it’s tricky to assess. In some ways, you could say 12 years, in others, a few months. ‘Lie In Lone’ for example, was written when I was at university, maybe a little aer I think. But I added parts over the years but never felt it was right at all until I shared it with Brock. Brock fell in love with it and I would get these wild emails at all hours telling me he was working on this and that. It was hilarious and remarkable to hear/read. I recorded some arrangements and structures right up until earlier in the year before I swung them over to Brock and I think he was working on them for a few months. Saying that, he packed the same amount of work in those years I had into those few months I swear. It was obsessive but anything less would have taken the sheer intensity away from the album. Short answer then: about 12 years maybe, with full bloom being about 3 months I would say.
Was there any piece in particular from the record that surprised you with the way it turned out? That diverged dramatically from your initial expectation of it? Brock: Haha I guess all of them, really, as I had no idea how any of them would turn out, but I would say the most profound example would be ‘Lie in Lone.’ That one was a bit different because we started with something that was sort of already a song, albeit a really raw sort-of rough dra of one, made by Ian like 10-plus years ago. Personally my original intention was to have the track be based more literally on the original, which it is in the beginning, but it ended up evolving into something very different from what I originally expected – which turned out to be a good thing, in my opinion. In the end it sort of morphed into a two-part narrative on his original central theme, which came out way different than I think either of us would have expected, but more amazing than I think either of us would have imagined. All I could do was go with my heart, and in doing so it turned into something much more dramatic and intense than I had originally expected. The best part was, when Ian heard the final result, he said it had completed the thoughts he had started all those years ago but hadn’t quite finished. For me, you can’t get anything more beautiful from a collaborative effort – and quite frankly, you can’t get a much more intensely beautiful track than ‘Lie in Lone.’ Ian: ‘Lie In Lone’ was the piece that scared me the most maybe, as Brock just wanted to leave everything hanging out really, warts and all. I wrote it when I was at university I think and had added instrumental elements over the years. Something about it really stayed with me but I needed other ears to really develop it and Brock was the first to hear this. I guess I was very surprised by the fact that it crossed so many boundaries on a musical level, but at the same time the spirit was very natural and not forced. It’s weird and sounds very cheesy, but there was a lot of emotion in this piece, which Brock just understood in the fullest sense and worked with, developing it in ways I could not believe. I know that is very abstract sounding and music is music, but having that closeness to someone so far away who is just 100% attuned to the spirit and emotion of the work is so, so powerful. I think overall, the whole thing didn’t surprise me at all from a musical / technical level, but on other, deeper levels, I was blown away.
Are there plans for future releases together?
now, which of course means this year is going to be crazy.
Ian: Right now I think we just need to give this record its space to breathe fully. But given the success of the record, for my part I would work with Brock again in a heartbeat. I think once you find someone who you can work with so easily and so openly, its something to hold onto. We will be working together as he has another release on Home Normal this year, and we are in regular contact of course. We both have projects we are working on now, but I am sure that we will set some time aside to work on more things when the time is right for both of us.
In the next few months the first of two Kinder Scout (w/ Jason Corder and Danny Norbury) releases will be out. The first will be out on one of my favourite labels – Preco – called ‘The Writing Life’. The second was originally a collaboration between Jason and myself, but we expanded it to include Danny as well (and this form Kinder Scout as the three of us) and will be out on Home Normal towards the end of the year. Jason also has a Juxta Phona record out in a few months on NKR which I appear on. The Whaler’s Collective (w/ Gareth Davis, Felicia Atkinson, Miko and Ryonkt) will have its debut out on Home Normal later in the year. Sometime either this year or next, the Lantscap (w/ Forrest – Warren Kroll) debut will be out on Infraction. Gareth and I have also completed an album of outtakes from The Whaler’s Collective (although the pieces are very different) called Night Shots, which will be out on 12″ from Champion Version. Tim Diagram (Maps and Diagrams, Hessien) and I are well on our way with some pretty incredible sounding work, which will probably see the light of day this year. As well as this I am putting the final touches to the Rion album (with Ryonkt again), tying up the work I have spent the past 12 years on with Ben Jones (who runs Home Normal with me), and finally completing the Tiny Isles debut (originally a collaboration with Christopher Hipgrave which expanded to a full blown super-group including Jason Corder, Hecanjog, Konntinent and Talvihorros, plus guest vocalist Miko). There are a few more ongoing projects, which should be kept secret for now I think, but I will also release a long form live studio session album to celebrate Resting Bell’s 100th release. It’s going to be a pretty damn busy year!
Brock: No specific plans, but we’ve both already agreed that we’d love to do it again, and I can say from my end that we will definitely make that happen – although how I can say unilaterally that I will make a bilateral cooperation happen, I don’t know. How very American of me. You mentioned other Home Normal releases, can you tell us anything about them, and are there any other things in the pipeline for you both? Brock: Well I can’t speak for Ian of course, but I’m very excited to have my second fulllength for Home Normal coming up later this year, titled ‘The First Day,’ a quite complex narrative that spans a ton of time and events, which I’ll spare you the details of for now as I’ve rambled a lot already so far. I’ve also got a second album coming up for Glacial Movements (a series of interpretations of Netherworld’s ‘Morketid’), a 12” collaboration with ASC on his Auxiliary imprint, and a few upcoming surprises both under bvdub and a couple other monikers, familiar and otherwise. But I know whatever I have in the pipeline pales in comparison to Ian. That guy is the dictionary definition of prolific. Ian: Brock has recently completed ‘The First Day’ which is kind of the follow-up to ‘Tribes…’ and one of the most incredible records I have ever heard to be honest. It’ll be out later in the year but we haven’t set an exact date yet. As for myself, well… things have been building up for over 2 years now since the last recordings I made (‘Snow Roads’). A lot of people think I release all the time but the truth is in over two years now I have only released a live album through Under The Spire and a reissue of Tents and Hills on Humming Conch. I haven’t actually released anything I have recorded in the last three or so years
www.nomadickids.com www.myspace.com/iandhawgood www.bvdub.org
............. “The Truth Hurts” is available from the Nomadic Kids Republic website now. Priced (with shipping) lower than most downloads of immeasurably lower merit, the proceeds go to the deserving causes listed above. Hard to call album of the year before even the halfway mark, but it will take an almighty offering to usurp this contender. - Alex Gibson
BEE MASK ELEGY FOR BEACH FRIDAY
‘Elegy for Beach Friday’ is a cryptic compendium of enthralling, sacramental and esoteric scales...
Mysterious American musician and director of the cassette label Deception Island, Chris Madak aka Bee Mask, mines his own substantial back catalogue of limited edition tapes and CD-Rs that were released between 2003 and 2010… ‘Elegy for Beach Friday’ is an accomplished anthology that contains eleven tracks of capably blended synthesisers, percussion, piano, guitar, tape, electronics, and Max MSP. These imaginatively re-visualised, revised and reprocessed recordings will delight audiences both old and new. Deducted from Your Share in Paradise balances a light astral atmosphere of increasing intensity and dark pulses of reverberated drone to form divine gyrations. It pronounces how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Conceptually the piece is a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization. Fallen Tree Thursday and the HalfCrushed Arc of the Sky Taking Tea in the Pastoral Index is a convoluted compositional articulation of spiritual acuity. A compound palette of cyclical chimes, organic orientations and oppressive industrial impressions intermingle to give an accelerated sense of time and space that may allude to the apprehension and anxiety incurred when the human mind comprehends the vastness and complexity of the cosmos. Causes and Cures uses an introspective constant of alien ambience presented in the form of an intense flow of encrypted
data, as interstellar interference echoes and explodes deep in hyper space. …so that We Each Wander through a True Elysium has a field of intense percussive energies and synthesised spirits to represent the ancestral susurration of the underworld, the final resting places of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous. Askion Kataskion Lix Tetrax Damnameneus is a symbolic representation of ancient Greek mysticism. A power source of restorative radiance fuses with magical voices and phantom metaphors for a number of purposes including protection, gaining power, and exorcising daimones. Elegy for Beach Friday presents a requiem of campanological modifications that allows in, and eventually gives way to, discordant drone. Incidental accompaniments of drums, bells and cymbals create the sense of an ill-fated incantation and reminds us that Friday is considered unlucky in some cultures. The Book of Stars Vibrating employs ringing, clanging, static and an occasion of strummed obliteration to represent the stars that pulsate slightly as churning gas in their outer layers creates low-frequency sound waves that rebound inside them. The frequency of each wave reveals the speed at which sound travels through a star’s inner layers, shedding light on its density, temperature, composition and rotation. In the Karst Interior creates a unique and vulnerable soundscape that is formed by dronish erosion, synth abrasions, primordial cries and veiled voice transmissions. The apocryphal air here
www.editionsmego.com www.bee-mask.tumblr.com
refers to rainwater, made acidic by carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and soil that slowly infiltrates cracks in limestone and marble, dissolving the rock and enlarging the openings to eventually form caves. Stop the Night welcomes us with an optimistic shimmer of synthesised electromagnetism and fretful low frequencies to slowly remind the listener over ten minutes how dusk is the beginning of darkness in the evening, and occurs aer twilight, when the sky generally remains bright and blue. How to Live in a Smashed State mimics a psychological or behavioural pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Disorderly dris of percussive bells and chimes amalgamate with deep obtrusions of disinformation to form galactic gloom. Scarlet Thread, Golden Cord makes reference to the highly embellished ceremonial robes that are oen associated with Abrahamic priests. Quasi-religious psychedelics, throbbing dictatorial drone and a hypnotic haze of aural vapours and fumy fizz combine as enigmatic Martian communications try to subvert each and every listener’s individual sense of control over their own thinking, behaviour, emotions or decision making. ‘Elegy for Beach Friday’ is a cryptic compendium of enthralling, sacramental and esoteric scales, melodies and rhythmic patterns that comes highly recommended. - Dean Rocker
JANNICK SCHOU THE ACT OF SHIMMERING
I’ll ask of the berserks, you tasters of blood, Those intrepid heroes, how are they treated, Those who wade out into battle? Wolf-skinned they are called. In battle They bear bloody shields. Red with blood are their spears when they come to fight. They form a closed group. The prince in his wisdom puts trust in such men Who hack through enemy shields. * The Haraldskaer saga
The Berserkers were Norse warriors who terrified into submission those unlucky enough to clash with them. The exact details of their lives have been lost in the passage of time, but it is oen believed that they dressed in animal skins and worked themselves into a frenzy before battle. Perhaps partaking in the hallucinogenic mushroom known as fly agaric, the warriors would quite literally ‘go berserk’, turning the fierce noise of prebattle into an awesome cacophony. Danish composer Jannick Schou follows in the footsteps of these ancient Scandinavian combatants, but replaces physical power with a sonic force equally unrelenting…
Experimedia, Schou’s uncompromising vision is accentuated by the assertion that The Act Of Shimmering shall only be sold on 12” Vinyl.
Appearing under his own name and as Cyclon, Schou has already proven his worth with a slew of releases appearing on Dead Pilot Records, Under The Spire, Rural Colours, Heat Death Records, and the label which Schou co-runs, dotContemporary. Available here on
It would be a mistake to think of the album as consisting of noise only. Rather, it is both paradoxically brutal and subtle, a tightrope which demands high fidelity and a keen ear for almost hidden details. This subtlety is shown on title track Act Of Shimmering. Within the din, one picks up
Each side of the album contains three pieces cohesive in tone and timbre; do not look for a quiet/loud/quiet sound here, everything is simply at high volume and it is invigorating. The album opens with Enormity Of An Empty Sky, beginning slowly but soon building up its power and by second number Sky We Are Silent, The Act Of Shimmering will floor the listener with a strength which echos the most abrasive noise-pioneers.
www.experimedia.net www.myspace.com/schoudk
hints of something different emerging, a more delicate and tuneful aspect to Schou’s art. This complexity, this friction between melody and noise usually results in noise reigning supreme, but there are still snatches of hidden melody throughout the remainder of the album. The Act Of Shimmering may be most easily defined by its harshness and confrontational power but unlike the Berserkers, what Jannick Schou offers to us here is not confined to just one theme. Each of the six pieces highlight a composer with the confidence to trust in the listener’s intelligence, the artist not deigning to pander, nor indulge his audience – this is both to Schou’s credit and to our benefit. Released on July 5th by Experimedia, in a limited pressing of 300 copies. - Adam Williams
THE LONG WHITE CLOUD PART ONE: ALICIA MERZ - BIRDS OF PASSAGE
“From their distant flight Through realms of light It falls into our world of night, With the murmuring sound of rhyme.”
New Zealand is a country that punches above its weight in every area it represents itself in – sport, food, film, wine and the arts. Birds of Passage, the experimental music project of poet and songwriter Alicia Merz, is yet another example of the talent that the country produces with startling regularity. Merz resides on the North Island in Hamilton, a town known for its museums, café culture and ethnic diversity. Alicia is involved in a number of projects; Birds Of Passage – whom she recently toured as throughout Europe, flying the flag for Denovali Records who released her debut album, Without The World.
How long did ‘Without The World’ take to record? It was recorded over a long period of time because I was just making music for myself; I had no intention of putting it anywhere for people to hear. I had some really bad experiences when I was in my late teens and early 20s, which is when I started writing and recording, which subconsciously helped me cope with situations and deal with stuff. Aer a few years, I put some of the songs up online, and when futurerecordings approached me, I put the songs I’d already recorded towards the album and recorded a few more songs specifically to make up the rest of it.
How much other equipment did you have to do the recording? Did you need to gather a lot? I just used the basics. Over time I’ve collected quite a lot. Did you collect most of your equipment at home in New Zealand, or when you lived in Australia?
Yes, all by myself (except for “Fantastic Frown” which my brother recorded, but I still wrote it all).
In Australia I recorded my first songs with my brother (Toby’s) equipment. They were really basic songs but I got a little idea of how to use whatever program it was he had. But all the equipment I’ve bought has been in NZ. My other brother Bruno very kindly sent me some equipment from Europe.
The music is described as “private” in the press release – was it a personal album, hard to make?
Has there been any reaction or feedback from the release that surprised you?
Yes indeed, very private and very personal, but it wasn’t hard to make.
All of it.
Dear And Unfamiliar – an upcoming release with Leonardo Rosado/ Subterminal, best known as FeedbackLoop label curator. The snippets available on Soundcloud indicate an intelligent and sparse outing, reverb drenched melodies hung around sparse cinematic vocals. Track “We’ll Always Have Paris” is stunning in its simplicity, a haunting masterwork.
So that would mean you recorded the album by yourself?
The Boy and the Brook – collaboration with Leeds-based brother Bruno Merz, which has seen light on the Tomorrow’s Conversations release from earlier this year, discussed in some detail below. Alicia recently took some time to discuss these projects with Fluid, and to shed some light on her (seemingly) perpetually full dance card…
going on hiring the mic for literally 3 days at a time, once a month, or less. Later, when I got a Mac, it was much easier for me.
I guess that’s because I was making it for myself…songs I was writing with no plan to. I just wrote them, and then recorded them. The hardest part was hiring the equipment to record with in those early days, hehe. In the little town I live it was unbelievably hard to find a mic to hire, and adding to that problem was of course I had no money to spare, so it was all my money
I was really, really happy to find people really liked it and appreciated it. But if I’d known it was going to be reviewed I probably would never have released it. It didn’t enter my head it would ever be reviewed or analyzed. I just imagined a few people would listen to it and liked imagining them listening on rainy days and nights in bed. I really did not record it to be critiqued! But it’s flattering to know it’s listened to enough that people have done
Were there any records that were a direct or indirect influence? Were you listening to anything during the process that you felt had a bearing on it?
talented poet, photographer, musician and producer and its been a great pleasure to work with him. I’m really excited about all of the releases, and very thankful to Denovali for supporting me.
New Zealand is a magnificent country; proud, resourceful and warm hearted. They don’t deserve the injustice being visited on them at present, and supporting this project gives valuable assistance.
In the past the music I listened to a lot was Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen and Nina Simone, Bjork, Stina Nordenstam, Lambchop, Loreena McKennitt and others. But when I was writing the music, and even now, I really hardly listened to anything. Everything felt like it got in the way somehow.
Denovali Records seems to have a fairly diverse roster. How did you two meet?
........
Yeah, I have some amazing stable mates. I released ‘Without The World’ on another label, and Denovali heard it through them and approached me about re-releasing it on vinyl. Of course, I was flattered.
As most readers would no doubt be aware, Christchurch, the biggest city on the South Island in New Zealand, has been repeatedly struck by earthquakes both this year and last. The first in September damaged the city severely, yet took no life. The aershocks in February this year, however, caused catastrophic damage throughout the city and took the best part of two hundred lives.
It was the same if I watched a movie or tv. I never watched any movies or tv while I was writing that first album, and very, very rarely would listen to music.
The Denovali Swingfest is in Germany, right? Does that mean you’ll be able to do some other shows around it?
You mention keeping your radar clear of artistic influences when you’re writing music; do you do the same for your poetry?
Yes, it’ll be another tour around Europe, but this time I’d love to go further in to Eastern Europe and Italy, Spain and Portugal as well… and of course there is Scandinavia.
I always work best when I’m clear of artistic influences. I write much more poetry then too. So, yes, I try to keep it clear, but I do so far less these days than I was able to in the past. How did you find your time touring Europe? Is the reaction to your music different there to home? I loved Europe. I loved singing and playing for the people there, but I am not a born performer at all so it was pretty hard for me. I was really nervous. The reaction is the most different it could possibly be. I wouldn’t dare to perform live here. Most people here are pretty conservative and even my friends here never mention my music, and I can sense they don’t like it. People here seem to need to feel safe in the mainstream’s choice of media. Do you have further tours planned? What have you lined up for this year? Hopefully I’ll tour next year, maybe around October so I can play the Denovali Swingfest. This year I have three releases scheduled: the first is a collaborative concept album with Leonardo Rosado. Leonardo produced all of the music and I wrote the lyrics and sung the songs, so it’s a departure from ‘Without The World’ territory. Leonardo’s music is very different to mine; he uses field recordings and drones, as I do, but his are much more textured than mine, yet still minimalist. He also plays instruments and uses equipment I’ve never even heard of. He’s amazing – a very
An aside? As most readers would no doubt be aware, Christchurch, the biggest city on the South Island in New Zealand, has been repeatedly struck by earthquakes both this year and last. The first in September damaged the city severely, yet took no life. The aershocks in February this year, however, caused catastrophic damage throughout the city and took the best part of two hundred lives. In the last week, whilst Alicia and myself were discussing her music, Christchurch suffered further aershocks that have again damaged the already unfortunate city. Merz has been involved in a compilation similar to the recent Fluid/Hibernate ‘Kanshin’ compilation for Japan, ‘Tomorrow’s Conversations’, with proceeds going to support ongoing relief work in Christchurch. The release features a host of talented musicians including Nils Frahm & Anne Müller, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Les Fragments de la Nuit, Dear and Unfamiliar, Move, Nemean Lion, I’ve Lost, Her Name is Calla, sink \ sink, worriedaboutsatan, and not least Alicia’s projects Boy and the Brook and Birds Of Passage. As was the case with Japan, the attention of the world quickly dried from Christchurch in the weeks following the quake, and the work to rebuild the city and her inhabitant’s lives is ongoing. I would strongly encourage anyone with a civic conscience to visit the project’s Bandcamp site before returning to this article to finish reading it.
An aside?
In the last week, whilst Alicia and myself were discussing her music, Christchurch suffered further aershocks that have again damaged the already unfortunate city. Merz has been involved in a compilation similar to the recent Fluid/Hibernate ‘Kanshin’ compilation for Japan, ‘Tomorrow’s Conversations’, with proceeds going to support ongoing relief work in Christchurch. The release features a host of talented musicians including Nils Frahm & Anne Müller, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Les Fragments de la Nuit, Dear and Unfamiliar, Move, Nemean Lion, I’ve Lost, Her Name is Calla, sink \ sink, worriedaboutsatan, and not least Alicia’s projects Boy and the Brook and Birds Of Passage. As was the case with Japan, the attention of the world quickly dried from Christchurch in the weeks following the quake, and the work to rebuild the city and her inhabitant’s lives is ongoing. I would strongly encourage anyone with a civic conscience to visit the project’s Bandcamp site before returning to this article to finish reading it. New Zealand is a magnificent country; proud, resourceful and warm hearted. They don’t deserve the injustice being visited on them at present, and supporting this project gives valuable assistance. We won’t be going anywhere. We can wait for you until you get back. You’re back? Thank you. I’ll add that this aside is mine alone, not Alicia’s. We will now return you to your scheduled viewing. And thanks again. ........
‘Without The World’ was essentially an experiment, in terms of production and composition...
How has Tomorrow’s Conversations progressed? Can you give people an idea of the aims of the project, and how it came about? I wanted to do something to help Christchurch when it was hit by the earthquake. Bruno and I had already recorded ‘Tomorrow’s Conversations’ and it seemed a perfect title for the album. Its aim is to raise money for Christchurch and in return people get good music. Another thing about it, the photo on the cover is of my Oma in Indonesia in about 1930. She moved from Holland to NZ in 1951 and her time here was difficult. She lived here until she died last year at 100 years old. My son was born on her 98th birthday. I was really close to her and she and the photo hold great significance for me and I was really so happy to use it for Tomorrow’s Conversations. You know, people so easily forget about things aer a time, no matter how much impact they may have had. Unfortunately totally true. There’s certainly a lot of compassion fatigue around the disasters we’ve all seen
recently; Christchurch has really been seriously impacted by these events, hasn’t it? Yes, Christchurch is really going through a hard time. Aer the earthquake in February, they’ve been having so many aershocks, and more earthquakes. Yesterday they had another quite big one. And all while they’re trying to rebuild their lives. So many people lost their homes, so many people have le there, so many are still trying to live there; as with any disaster, it must be really, really hard and very depressing. I think another terrible thing about it is that it was so sudden; they didn’t know they were on a faultline, had never had earthquakes there before, so it was a huge shock when it started happening and they really weren’t prepared for anything like it. Are the proceeds from Tomorrow’s Conversations going to a particular charity? Are people able to donate more through Bandcamp than the specified price? All the proceeds are going to Red Cross’ New Zealand Earthquake Appeal. The donations start at $6.00 and people can donate any amount higher than that.
www.denovali.com/birdsofpassage www.soundcloud.com/birdsofpassagemusic www.facebook.com/birdsofpassagemusic
How did the artists on the record come to be involved? I proposed the idea to some artists I like and very kindly they accepted What are the other two releases of the three you mentioned? Are you able to discuss them? The other 2 are my own… I’d rather keep it a surprise, but look out for them because they’ll be really nice. Quite a bit darker than ‘Without The World’. ‘Without The World’ was essentially an experiment, in terms of production and composition: I can say quite confidently I’ve now mastered the style and sound I developed with ‘Without The World’. ........ ‘Without The World’ is released on vinyl, limited to 300 pieces in 3 different colors; thick gatefold sleeves; 180g vinyl; a thick 36 page book including the poem collection “A Garden of Secrets” by Alicia Merz and is illustrated by Bruno Merz. The CD features a 6panel matte digipak. - Alex Gibson
MARIHIKO HARA CREDO
Credo is a brilliant example of how an artist can go sideways and still inform his own creative process with fascinating new insights...
In less than four years, Marihiko Hara has released a small but wonderful collection of works, ranging from introspective microsound and drone music (Cesura, 2007) to haunted compositions for piano and electronics (Prosa, 2010 – in collaboration with Tomas Phillips). The beautiful Nostalghia (2010), exploring memories of long gone travels, is in itself a beautiful entry point into Hara’s work – a labyrinthine and delicate journey through faded images and sepia-tinged pictures of the past. Hara’s sound world, involving intimate piano melodic lines, hissy and floating drones and textured incidentals, feels extremely tactile and intimate, and more oen than not very fragile and immensely touching. It is always interesting when an artist, whose work you appreciate and admire, escapes his/her comfort zone and embarks upon exploring new and unknown territories. It gives you new insights into a vision you thought you knew, blurring the lines between the familiar and the alien. Some artists exist within two or more creative realms, and continually alternate between different alter egos, as a way of nurturing a larger musical ecosystem. Marihiko Hara’s new album, Credo, is a step towards such explorations and for this reason at least represent a major leap into his own artistic development. The story goes that label head Ian Hawgood had been very keen on Hara’s work since the seminal Cesura, and, as he was looking to do something different on Home Normal, Hara proposed to release a beat-led album. The result of this association is a
fascinating record structured around the discovery of the aforementioned alter-ego, which completely transcends the initial idea of using drum patterns and beat loops… Starting with mirage, Hara contemplates his past work in the form of an optical illusion, where remnants of his pianobased records appear through a diaphanous veil that recedes as glitched out bits of digital detritus propel the track. The rhythm is so broken that it feels like an in-between that never crystallises into a solid form but give a foretaste of his new endeavors. Following this liminal opener comes the first part of the credo series: i-iii is a collection of three related pieces whose ascetic patterns remind at times of Alva Noto’s album Transform. As the series progresses melodic elements come to the fore and the rhythms themselves gain more momentum until they crash into white noise. Central tracks, terra incognita and trio see Hara reflecting on his new found directions, as the mood becomes darker and self-contained. The rhythmic propulsion is still there but more subdued somehow – delicate sine waves, warm bass tones and abstract samples create a rich sonic world to dwell into – again Carsten Nicolai’s work (mainly the more recent For 2 and Aleph-1 albums) come to mind as a point of reference. The next three credos (iv-vi) are in a way more schizoid than their predecessors, displaying a fantastic array of interwoven micro-rhythms dilating and contracting at
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times with effortless efficacy, even if the 8bit treatment of some samples can be fatiguing at times. Credo v is most likely the best of the series with its wonderful percussive elements being spat erratically onto an unforgiving bass-line. Full attention and repeated listens will reveal intricate clustered samples and crystalline microsounds that come and go – as suspended both in time and in space – to give the track a mesmerising tridimensionality. Closing number, alter ego, is a wonderful collage of micro-house, dub-techno, glitch, drone-music and post-digital electronica elements, all thrown together, thoroughly examined and finally discarded. It is as if Hara was looking through a window of possible directions, unable to decide where to go, but creating for the matter a fantastic piece of music. As the album draws to a close, one wonders if Hara has discovered his alterego or if he’s just explored a new direction to see what he could find en route. At this point there is no definitive answer but in many ways, he has more than succeeded in creating something radically different and yet completely related to his past records. For this reason at least, Credo is a brilliant example of how an artist can go sideways and still inform his own creative process with fascinating new insights. Marihiko Hara has indeed opened a new space, and a wonderful one at that! - Pascal Savy
NOVELLER GLACIAL GLOW
Glacial Glow, finds the artist in a different kind of wilderness, but one no less austere...
Since departing from rock outfit Parts & Labor in 2009, Sarah Lipstate has taken to exploring deeply experimental territory. Under the nom de guerre of Noveller, armed with only a guitar and the determination to subject it to all manner of treatments, she has spent the last couple of years establishing a unique sonic language. In some ways, the title of last year’s album Desert Fires seems an apt description of the kind of soundworld Lipstate creates in her music. From the outset, on 2009’s Paint on the Shadows, her music has oen evoked wide, open spaces, although suggestive less of grandeur than the perspective of being alone in the midst of a vast environment. In every sense, Sarah Lipstate creates ‘wilderness music’ (think Gus Van Sant’s film Gerry and you’ll be in the right aesthetic area), combining a sensitive use of restrained dynamics with an impressive sense of patience, allowing her material time to move, rather than hurrying it from place to place. Sometimes this leads in the direction of drones; elsewhere, pulsating, angular shapes are made, like bizarre rock formations. Her new album, Glacial Glow, finds the artist in a different kind of wilderness, but one no less austere. This is established right from the start, opening track “Entering” splitting the guitar into two layers, one repeating a light arpeggio motif while the other is preoccupied with a violin-like wail; this is mildly unsettling, but the very narrow stereo field creates an uncomfortably claustrophobic effect.
“Glacial Wave” widens things, the continuing arpeggios and shiing chords suggesting Durutti Column, a suggestion emphasised further when the melody (at first distant, only briefly-glimpsed) pushes forward, laying its riffs bare.
one made of arpeggios, another strummed, while others branch outwards, but their respective reverb serves to keep them far away from us, as though observed from behind glass (or should that be ice?).
When Lipstate moves away from delicacy, the results are usually pretty astringent, and Glacial Glow has its share of this. “Blue” is the most striking example, a mesmerising track in which a small, fragile idea begins, circling, changeless. Abruptly, a rude, sharp pulse sets off over the top of it, answered by bursts of a distorted chord, eventually making the original material seem tiny and almost forgotten. “Resolutions” is similar, the small idea here sounding like an idling computer singing to itself, while a guitar melody swings and surges in the middle-distance. The track is engaging but strange, and as a whole feels like an experiment in a lab.
The most curious track of all is “Waxwing”; having begun in a tortured display of fauxcello histrionics, grinding and keening, there’s a pause—and then, a glittering fabric of electronics as from a past time. Somewhat mollified, the faux-cello remains a lurking presence beneath these electronics, which develop into a complex network of interlocking sounds before glittering themselves to pieces. At the album’s conclusion, “Ends”, the spectre of Vini Reilly gently resurfaces. Delicious clouds of guitarwork slowly yield to the sound of the sea, and a pointillistic idea finally emerges, the guitar (sounding almost synthetic) placing points of melody that hang in the air.
As in her previous work, Sarah Lipstate broaches ideas gradually, resisting the urge to lunge forward. “Alone Star” epitomises this, throughout sounding like an introduction, poised to launch into something else. Eventually it becomes clear that this track is all about dri and gesture, and that what appeared to be introductory is more substantial and significant than it seemed. It’s clear that Lipstate wants to keep her distance, or rather keep herself to herself, ploughing her furrow without being too concerned of anyone else. In “Tuesday before Poland” she overlays assorted melodic strands,
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On a first listening, some of these tracks may seem too aloof for their own good. But this is, paradoxically, what makes Noveller such a compelling project, that the music never for one moment seeks to garner praise or even gain attention. Glacial Glow doesn’t provide instant gratification, but instead it delivers other rewards, rewards that mean more and last much longer. On this album, Sarah Lipstate’s innate sense of direction is as strong as ever, and where she takes us is always fascinating. - Simon Cummings
PUZZLE MUTESON EN GARDE
Themes of loss and hope, of despair and nostalgia, can be appreciated by anybody who has loved and has lived...
Folk music derives its origins from venerable working class traditions and its name reflects this. Notoriously difficult to define, the genre’s porous borders have helped to keep it fresh and ever relevant, with such a wide range of artists as Bob Dylan, Joanna Newsom, Nick Drake and Bonnie Prince Billy all falling somewhere within Folk’s purview. This latest release, brought to us by the prestigious Bedroom Community can also be defined as folk music but, following in the tradition of the finest material in the genre, Puzzle Muteson’s latest full-length album throws a lot more into the pot too. Little seems to be known about the enigmatic artist based in the Isle of Wight, other than he is a singer-songwriter originally from London who has a penchant for melancholic guitar and a talent which is self-evident. Choosing to remain anonymous could be seen as an affectation to some, but so sincere are the songs within En Garde, that the lack of information on the artist forces us to focus solely on the music, which is probably for the best, since it would be foolish indeed to miss a moment of this carefully craed masterpiece.
Puzzle Muteson’s label-mates Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurðsson lend their arranging and producing talents to En Garde respectively, and the album was recorded in Reykjavík’s Greenhouse Studios, which has held host to artists like Björk, Bonnie Prince Billy and CocoRosie to name but a few. So, pedigree affirmed and beauty assured, what can we say about the songs contained within En Garde? Opening with I Was Once A Horse, the troubadour plays beautiful, harmonic finger picking guitar, while singing in a voice which sounds quite unlike, yet in its confident use of range is reminiscent of, Nick Drake. The voice is of a timbre which is tailor made for lamentation and one feels that the artist could probably sing songs about the sweetest of life’s joys, yet they would still sound bittersweet. Backed at times by what is probably pretty xylophone chiming and strings, the song comes to a close riding out a wave of introspection. Puzzle Muteson continues to further solidify his sound as En Garde progresses and a few of the album’s highlights include Water Rising, Medusa and Keyhole. Each
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track is composed with definite purpose and an iron grip cohesion, at times bringing to mind another contemporary Folk artist; Gravenhurst and, like Nick Talbot’s solo project, the man behind Puzzle Muteson is extremely skilled in raising his acoustic-guitar based songs to another level with subtle flourishes of beats and ambience. En Garde is another essential work from the always interesting Bedroom Community and the music contained within has a commercial element which should see Puzzle Muteson gain many more fans. However this is without a hint of artistic compromise or fame-seeking. Rather, the themes of loss and hope, of despair and nostalgia, can be appreciated by anybody who has loved and has lived. Released on Bedroom Community, En Garde is available for purchase now via www.puzzlemuteson.bandcamp.com - Adam Williams
DANIEL THOMAS FREEMAN THE BEAUTY OF DOUBTING YOURSELF
Manic depression is touching my soul I know what I want but I just don’t know How to, go about gettin’ it Feeling sweet feeling, Drops from my fingers, fingers Manic depression is catchin’ my soul
So sang Jimi Hendrix on “Manic Depression” – a song he wrote, recorded and first released in 1967 on the ‘Are You Experienced’ album… The relationships between depression and art are countless and diverse. Instances of poets, novelists, and musicians quickly spring to mind who have vividly portrayed depression, usually from personal experience of it. Recent research by health experts indicates that artists and musicians are the fih most likely professionals to suffer with depressive illness. That’s a chart that definitely isn’t ‘top of the pops’ for performers. Many people are drawn to the arts in order to fulfil a desire for acceptance and affection from their audience; they need that confirmation in order to feel good about themselves. But having a love affair with thousands of people you don’t know is bound to lead to discontent, despair and distress – oen as soon as you exit the stage, or go home to an empty mansion. Alcohol and narcotics have featured in the lifestyles of so many musicians for so long that sometimes it’s difficult to tell if depression is the symptom or the source. The phrase ‘rock and roll lifestyle’ is an all too familiar one in the obituary column when a famous musician dies, usually in tragic circumstances too. Some artists have a ‘swig’ or a ‘sniff’ to steady their nerves before performances; others have a ‘sip’ or a ‘smoke’ to come down from the high of the performance.
So does depression attract them to the arts? Or does making ‘art’ make them depressed? Does true creativity come from a place of suffering? Are the greatest writers, composers and artists the most tortured of souls? None of these questions are easily answered but we do know that Daniel Thomas Freeman (Rameses III) has certainly suffered for his art.
self-esteem shattered the artist asks himself, ‘do I deserve happiness?’ The Might of Angel’s uses a minimal core refrain of expanding vastness to assuage any internal angst. Eventually stringed coils gleam and glitter as they rise high into azure skies.
The Beauty of Doubting Yourself, written over six long years, is Freeman’s own personal and at times painful account of depression. The album is laid down into three distinct movements:
The Devil Would Steal Your Joy employs irregular blemished drone monoliths and detached choral shards in what are failed attempts to overpower the dulcimer and the veritable virtue that it expounds. The vulnerability of evolution is exposed.
The first movement is traumatic and opens with Dark House Walk, the small London street where Freeman experienced his descent into the abyss. Here a transmuted soundtrack of Westminster Cathedral bells is mixed with percussive scrap, drone debris and stifled strings to create acoustic psychogeographical gloom.
The third and final movement extends harmony, as Elegy And Rapture (For Margaret), a lament to his deceased mother, uses much more approachable and established musical motifs. Layered violin revisions, dronish dignity and horns of hindsight fuse to form a hiatus in which the past is re-examined.
Staring into Black Water is a 25 minute spite stream that creates tidal terror by merging despondent drone, disparaged percussion, voices of reservation and keyboard desolation. A heavy sense of hopeless perception and feelings of selfhate exist in this dark and disturbing deluge.
Finally, Staring into the Light, an epiphanic drone echo that strongly references western metaphysical salvation, brings the album to a close. Stringed solace, electromechanical piano poignancies, and vocalised alleviations remind us that it really doesn’t matter how dark may be the night, we will find our way — if we walk toward the light. It might only be a glimmer or a so gentle glow but it will dispel the darkness on the path where we go.
The second movement proffers hope and opens with The Beauty of Doubting Yourself, an instrumental imbroglio that signals that the worst is over. But with his
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- Dean Rocker
KOGUMAZA KOGUMAZA
Much more than the mere sum of its part, at times Kogumaza sounds like the future or the strange murmurings of the universe...
A computer lies idle, image aer image floats onto the screen: a forest of Norwegian spruce, nearly 60 metres high, magically illuminated brilliant white against the blackest night; a man flees across a winter field seemingly chased by a murder of crows. Flames engulf an apartment block in a busy city street; a reindeer head mounted upon a wall is mysteriously embraced by a plume of purple smoke. William S. Burroughs, bespectacled and serious, stands in front of a sign that reads ‘Danger’; the writer Robert Walser lies dead in the snow not far from the sanatorium where he spent the last years of his life – his footprints still visible. Photo aer photo, apparently random, appear at regular intervals. One aer the other. Of course, it doesn’t mean anything. But as the guitars burn and the drums pound, the room swells with a euphoric upsurge of noise and patterns slowly begin to form. First a confession: from the start I struggled with this latest release on the consistently excellent Low Point label. Not just with the name (apparently ‘kogumaza’ is the Japanese translation for the constellation, Ursa Minor, or Little Bear; the brightest star of which is Polaris, the North Star), nor the lack of defined track markers, rather I struggled to lose the comparisons that rang loud in my ears. And this bothered me. One minute the guitars screamed Mogwai, the next it’d be Sonic Youth, and then I’d find myself thinking “Isn’t that the same wah-wah pedal Spacemen 3 used on Revolution?” Before I know it I’m getting weird echoes of Can, then Swang crashes in waving a copy of Earth’s Pentastar in the air… But again this doesn’t mean anything. For all great art can be reduced to a list of its influences, if you are that way inclined; just
as sense can be made of the arbitrary, and structure found in the abstract. Stick with Kogumaza and you’ll be richly rewarded because persistent listening pays off. The thing is, there’s a slow release going on here; no pop hit, no adrenaline rush, but a steady drip of layers and textures that crystallise and form something almost magnificent. There is so much happening: shredded guitars, wires that whip and hum, strings that sing, guitar tones that are oen sublime, effects that sound like they shouldn’t have even been invented yet… The production is exemplary – almost, dare I say it, Pink Floyd-like in its depth of detail. Much more than the mere sum of its part, at times Kogumaza sounds like the future or the strange murmurings of the universe; at others, the cyclical pounding of drums conjures ghosts of ancient rituals, as if drawn from the very centre of the earth. Yes, there’s plenty of heavy riffing going on, but this is far from being just another stoned, drone rock album. Made up of two side-long pieces, each divided into four parts, Kogumaza clearly benefits from being listened to as one long singular-themed piece of music. As such, it’s fluid, in a state of flux. Like the ocean it surges and recedes, rising and crashing. Heavily processed, ambient meanderings slowly expand into huge, rich slabs of noise; subtle guitar lines sink their hooks in deep, hypnotically repeating phrases until they bore into your skull. Then all of a sudden it collapses and starts to decay until only a gentle haze of distortion remains, fizzing in the ether. And then the process starts over again. There’s something organic about Kogumaza; it feels agitated, taught and menacing, always threatening to explode.
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That it doesn’t actually explode is perhaps t h e a l b u m ’ s o n e fl a w . T a k e t h e aforementioned Swang, for example. With its monolithic guitars and heavy duty stoner licks, it feels like it should erupt or at least topple the speakers to the floor like statues of fallen leaders; when it doesn’t, the listener is momentarily le frustrated, cheated even. However, this complaint must be put in context. This album is sculpted out of massive, extended riffs and primitive, yet subtle, rhythms; it’s hypnotic, pounding, fuzzedup and mesmerizing, and when it gets going you don’t want it to stop. As the noise builds you want it to get louder and louder, you want to climb inside it, you want the walls to shake around you… So deeply immersed does the listener become, so entranced in the throb of guitars and drums that you want it to go on forever, which essentially means, no matter how good Kogumaza gets – and believe me it is good – it simply cannot satisfy. However, while Kogumaza may not ultimately deliver the “third-mind li-off” that the accompanying press release promises or satiate the impossible dream that this listener craves, I can assure you that prolonged exposure will get you pretty damned close. How they do so with just two guitars and a stripped-back drum kit is beyond me. One thing I know for sure though: when the band next hits town, I‘ll be there, down the front with my head firmly wedged in the speakers; I strongly suggest you join me. Who knows where it might take us? - Graham Seon
PETRELS HAELIGEWIELLE
The one sheet for Petrels – Haeligewielle says the album is comprised of ‘songs of water, songs of stone’. It sounds vague, but in truth that’s all you need to know. To say that Petrels is the solo project of Oliver Barrett of Bleeding Heart Narrative is already saying too much. This, his first solo album, offers up a seriously detailed narrative hinted at with the song titles. Combining post-rock, drone and Americana elements; Haeligewielle pits an all-consuming darkness against the frailest slivers of light to create one of the most immersive listening experiences of 2011 thus far. In many ways Haeligewielle is an ode to tales of water and stone, but also specifically William Walker, who is mentioned in the title of the albums final song. William Walker (1869-1818) was a British scuba diver famous for shoring up Winchester Cathedral, a task that involved him re-building the foundation of the cathedral while being submerged underwater in total darkness for six hours a d a y f o r fi v e y e a r s . A l s o o f n o t e : Haeligewielle is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘holy well’. The album opens with “Aer Francis Danby”, a reference to the Irish painter of the romantic era whose work o touched on themes of water and the apocalypse. As for the music, the song opens with the quick fade in of a terse and strained highpitched sound that could be a guitar but also resembles the howling wind. Instantly, the song takes the listener to some place isolated and dark. The song spends the first half combining restrained melody over a layer of drone, and the second half turns into a sort of rock n roll outro. In one song Petrels gives us a song that feels like both a beginning and an end. Second song “Silt” comes on strong with what sounds like a chorus line of bowed string and digital flourishes that seem to emulate water. Silt is granular material derived from stone, in this case probably associated with the sediment that darkened Walker’s hours for those long days. A percolating rhythm underneath the track has the quality of bubbling water. Slowly a new melody emerges over top of the drone elements and brings it all together with a new centrifugal force to
drive the song. If you were to remove silt from the context of water it has the quality of ash. One can almost picture a world of ash (silt?) when listening to the whole record as it has the quality of something almost post-apocalyptic. It brings together something historical, almost classical, but places it in a context where it feels almost alien. This is the sort of dark and claustrophobic emotional terrain not unfamiliar to listeners of Seasons (PreDin). ‘Canute’ likely refers to King Canute, the Danish ruler of England, who was convinced by his people that he was so mighty he could stop the tide from coming in. The story goes that he tried to square off against the tide and nearly drowned. ‘Canute’ the song emerges quietly and quickly provides the densest layer of hissing-throbbing drone the album provides. Seriously: this song is loud. Is this the soundtrack to Canute almost being consumed by the water? It’s dark and sinister, but again Petrels lets a light shine in. It’s a piece that almost hints at an admiration for Canute’s brave naïveté as much as it does tell the story of how his foolishness almost killed him. “The Statue is Unveiled with the Face of Another” refers to the 1964 incident where a commemorative statue of Walker was unveiled, but due to an error by the artist featured the face of the Cathedral’s engineer rather than Walker. An error the Cathedral tried to keep quiet, thus leading some to believe the face was indeed that of Walker. The song provides the album’s most rustic song, fueled by the sort of Americana found in the work of Aaron Martin. Bowed strings and gently picked guitars take us from the apocalyptic drone of the previous track to a place almost rural and rustic. But is this the future or the past? In a way the piece is reminiscent of William Fowler Collins dusty soundscapes. It’s as if Petrels is giving a musical companion to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. We’re being ushered into a world that is at once new and also scarily reminiscent of the past. “Concrete” provides the album’s warmest moment. It introduces the element of human voice, and boy does it ever. The song is a thick chorus of male voices in a
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style the one sheet describes as ‘workmanlike’. The song has the feel of men singing about the world of labour and the lyrics reflect Walker’s task. Despite its title, the song is decidedly human. Rather than something cold and unmovable, it becomes a song about the fragility of life set against a back drop of work, and as ever, water and stone. “Winchester Croydon Winchester” provides the album’s most whimsical moment. Loaded with various keyboard phrases layered over one another it has a playful quality. The title refers to William Walker’s hours long commute from his home with family in Croydon to his work in Winchester. Finally, the album offers up its lengthiest number “William Walker Strengthens the Foundations”. At over 14 minutes in length it brings together all the musical terrain covered in the previous six songs into one solid statement. In the end it adds a darkly industrial almost techno inspired refrain built around a skewed loop that sounds alien even for electronic music. In a way Walker’s story is an odd one for an electronic musician to take the task of telling, his story is so much about the tension between mankind and nature. Psychically though, the story of a man who works away in total darkness to make some small shred of an impact in the larger world is everybody’s. And maybe that’s what drew Barrett to it. Either way, it was Barrett that picked up the torch and told Walker’s story, and probably it would terrify Walker to hear the sonic equivalent of those claustrophobic hours and years played out so well. The good news for the listener is that Petrels has provided us with what has to be the strongest solo debut from a musician so far in 2011. It’s as if Barrett has launched his solo career as Petrels by giving us his own Sisyphus narrative, and somehow it sounds dreadfully authentic – no small feat. Haeligewielle is an album so dense and immersive you sometimes feel as though you are drowning or being smothered, but that’s exactly the way it’s supposed to feel. - Brendan Moore
OFFTHESKY APPALACHIA & THE BEAUTIFUL NOWHERE
“Every summer, traveling through the mountains photographing, I am somehow able to renew and relive my childhood. I regain my southern, mountain accent and approach my people with openness, fascination, and respect; and they treat me with respect. My psychic antennae become sharpened and acute. I love these people, perhaps that is it, plain and simple. I respond to the sensual beauty of a hardened face with many scars, the deeply etched lines and flickers of sweat containing bright spots of sunlight. The eyes of my subjects reveal a kindness and curiosity, and their acceptance of me is gratifying. For me, this is rejuvenation of the spirit of time past, and I am better for the experience each time it happens. These portraits are, in a way, self-portraits that represent a long autobiographical exploration of creativity, imagination, vision, repulsion and salvation. My greatest fear as a photographer is to look into the eyes of my subject and not see my own reflection. My work has been an artist’s search for a deeper understanding of my heritage and myself, using photography as a medium and the Appalachian people as collaborators with their own desires to communicate. I hope, too, that viewers, will see in these photographs something of the abiding strength and resourcefulness and dignity of the mountain people.” - Shelby Lee Adams
“This work is a study to be felt. It does speak to you, if not directly, indirectly, more intuitively than in a conscious sense. This is a feeling culture: its people live with memory and spirits of times past. Having the freedom to feel leads to fearless honesty: expressing emotions directly, where others do not, creating volatility and changes at times yet, leading to staying power, never leaving one’s family or place. Faith is important. Jesus says: “Behold, I stay with you always.” Some live with hurt and retribution. They think of the future with uncertainty. Analytic dialogue and planning are not the norm here. This is difficult for some to understand. My work explores both internal and external representation, with more emphasis on the inner processes.” - Shelby Lee Adams
Originally from Kentucky, Ohesky is Jason Corder who currently resides in Denver, Colorado in the United States. From an early age, Jason experimented with simple piano melody patterns, tape deck recording, tracker soware and 8bit explorations. He went on to teach himself guitar, learning more advanced music production soware and eventually began to translate these ideas into his own tracks. These regularly shiing learning patterns started at the tender age of five, perhaps born out of an early Attention Deficiency Disorder diagnosis. This restlessness is something that Jason is comfortable with in music and embracing it has led to a gradual honing of cra over a lifetime of sound experiments. The more strings that he adds to his bow, the more curious he seems to get; and with each release, he likes to carefully explore his latest ideas and techniques. So for those of you with a few Ohesky records in your collection, you’ll notice a different shi and evolution explored within each. In 2006, Jason even decided to change the then Off The Sky moniker to the unique one-word morpheme ‘Ohesky’. If nothing else, this expresses his desire to hold evolution as a major facet of his artistic process. Magnetically drawn to melody and texture, Jason’s sound typically comprises of a deep and quirky aesthetic that draws in on all his influences. Musically, he cites an early interest in jazz and orchestral music as the foundation to the odd way in which he likes to think about music. Elsewhere, he concedes that he has learnt more about music through film, painting and his own sound experiments along the way. For his latest record ‘The Beautiful Nowhere’, Jason had initially set himself a loose rule to use as many acoustic
instruments as possible, whilst limiting the use of heavy electronic processing techniques. Instruments including guitar, harmonium, cello, toy piano, violin, kalimba, vibraphone and voice were recorded in a cabin near Carter Lake, Colorado in the peace of a beautiful, yet remote space. It was this secluded environment that encouraged and an existential state of mind and the resulting material gleaned of ideas relating to isolation and the surrounding rural landscape. Around the time of recording, Jason also watched a documentary called ‘The True Meaning Of Pictures’, about photographer Shelby Lee Adams. His subjects lie in deep Appalachia; an incredible culture caught on film that has haunted Jason ever since. Fluid was lucky enough to get some time with Jason recently, and he was able to fill us in on ‘The Beautiful Nowhere’, iPads and Shelby Lee Adams… How long did the album take to complete? JC: A little over a year – though some of the pieces were started a few years ago, le in the dust, revived and finished. The longest I’ve let a song sit before finishing it is about 7-8 years, I think. Just like a good drink, some things perfect with age… Is that the way you usually work, starting multiple projects and songs and working at them over time? JC: Not until the last few years really. I think it makes more sense to work on a group of songs then set them down for many months, allowing time to blur my perspective of them a bit. Going back to them aer becoming completely unfamiliar with them helps give me to
determine new directions to take with them. Also learning how to use the delete button in that process has really helped! How did the record come to its home at Hibernate? JC: Well, Jonathan and I were in some talks about me putting a record out with Hibernate. I actually sent him a whole different album to begin with and he responded with “I’d love to put this out on vinyl, would you mind adjusting it to fit on a record?”. The funny thing was, I had already finished a whole other record and had made it especially for vinyl to begin with. I kind of did that just to go through the process of creating a work for that medium (and with a little faith that somebody would want to release it on vinyl). So anyway, at that point I wrote Jonathan back and said ‘Hey, I’ve actually got this other record (The Beautiful Nowhere) that was made just for a 45 format’. I’m really happy he loved it instead. The original record I sent him – Endless Yonder – will be out soon via Alex Navarro’s SEM label. I’m very excited for that release as well! Were you listening to any material during this period that you felt had an influence on the two albums? JC: Absolutely! I’m always trying to soak in some kind of music… actually I got back into classical music a little bit; returning to my childhood years when that was all I was allowed to listen to. Debussy is one name in particular whose melodies I adore. But I also really got into Iron And Wine, as well as Morgan Packard’s latest Anticipate release – some excellent and inspiring music all around!
I guess I’m kind of an existentialist when it comes to playing instruments...
How would you describe your approach to guitar? JC: Loose and loopy… pretty, melodic and rhythmic too. I guess I’m kind of an existentialist when it comes to playing instruments. I typically like to only do like 3-4 takes, and I love it when notes don’t completely hit on the beat or when mistakes just pop up and turn into really golden moments in the song. This always feels better in the end than the songs I’ve created where every note had to be ironed, cut, and edited. During the creation of these records, I also created a live loop system using Max for Live, a broken trigger finger, and Ableton’s Looper effect. I control the trigger finger with my toes (now dubbed it ‘trigger toe’) to start and stop loop. The ‘trigger toe’ has a nice feature of allowing the pressure from each drum pad to transmit a cc – so the harder my toe pushes down on a pad, the more reverb I get on the guitar. But I used this setup on just about every song on these records… At what point did you come to appreciate that spontaneity in your music? Was there a project or song that triggered it? JC: It’s hard to say. I think working and playing with allot of different musicians has really helped me become addicted to embracing the loveliness of spontaneous sonic happening. But I think with my earlier records I ended up, sadly, ironing or editing out too many of the beautiful spontaneous moments because either a label expected me to do something very refined or “professional” or whatever. And I was probably a bit immature and self conscious; feeling I had to make something “perfect” therefore “acceptable” – which is a necessary but difficult part becoming a strong musician.
That’s all not to say that putting allot of effort into perfecting a mix or arrangement is a bad thing – it’s not. But an artist should allow for some freedom in their process and just feel okay with leaving in a few screw-ups. Some artists who have inspired me to go this route along the way are Phoenicia (their Brown Out record in particular), John Coltrane, Ricardo Villalobos, and of course Animal Collective. I’m also taken with the idea of Coltrane as an influence – jazz is a pretty experimental field, and it seems to sit with your style of unconventional musicianship well. Are there any elements that you take from jazz directly? JC: Well, I’ve certainly worked in my fair share of samples taken from old jazz records. I guess you don’t get more direct than that! But anymore I just try and take ideas from the spirit of that kind of music. Like the loose knit performance mentality that permeates jazz. Did working on these two albums give you a direction for your next? JC: Yes, of course! Lately I’ve been making guitar loops with the iPad using my Behringer FCB1010 floor stomp box and an awesome app called the ‘Every Day Looper’. I guess I want to be like all those weird bands out there who are now trying to make a record using just the iPad. It’s probably worth trying out just to get away from the usual tools and tricks and there are some amazing music creation apps for the iPad now… I’m really interested in you using the iPad for music. Could you make a whole record that way? JC: Well aer a couple months of researching various apps and how they are able to interact with each other, I really
think it’s 100% possible now – certainly not as easy as just using Logic or Ableton on a higher powered computer but with patience, it’s doable. So through the research, I’ve become obsessed with actually attempting to create a record that uses nothing but the iPad, acoustic instruments and a contact mic – mostly to satisfy my weird internal sense of self competition and to hopefully gain some patience through the process. But there’s a slew of great apps out there that really make it super fun to jam out and make sounds on the iPad (or iPhone). Iasuto is one, similar to Reaktor in the sense that you place modules and wire them up. But there’s the added aspect of each module’s distance from each other effecting various parameters – such as volume levels, pitch, etc. And you can animate the movement of the modules, which makes for some seriously cool dynamic weirdness. Also “Sunvox” is a great “tracker” style app that lets you wire up synths through various effects. So if you can get past the “tracker” style learning curve you can do some wicked sequencing. And then there’s multitrack DAW – a great DAW style app that lets you have up to 24 tracks and a timeline based audio arranger. And you can take recorded sounds created in the other mentioned apps and move them into multitrack DAW for editing/arranging. All without a laptop or internet connection. I could go on and on about all this nerdiness – but once I’ve finished the record I’m going to try and blog about the whole experience. Hopefully that will inspire others of the possibilities of using mobile devices to make music. I know it’s a totally trendy thing to try and do nowadays but the bottom line is it’s a lot of fun. And I’m just happy to be able to arrange music in some really odd, remote places…
How have you made records in the past, have you always done it yourself? JC: I guess on a majority of my release I’ve done most of the work. There’s a few where it was 50/50 effort (Suspended, Flyover Sound, Further To Find Closer) – and usually I’ll do the final polishing master pass if possible. I’ve been working with pillow garden lately (Sarah Chung) as she has some nice organic ideas and a voice that really works with my music. I’d like to use less of my voice and more of the female voice as it typically contains textural qualities that just seem to fit with what I do on the guitar. She and I just put out a free release via Audio Gourmet called ‘A Dream In A Dream’ – very pretty sleepy washy stuff. But all in all I really love working with different musicians as much as possible. New minds add new ideas and angles that I wouldn’t have been able to come up with on my own. It makes for a more dynamic record in the end too. Plus I’m a sampling junky so I love recording musicians who are willing to just play along to my music, impromptu-style. I’ve tried working with classically trained musicians but getting past the dogma of sheet music and oldschool academic thinking usually would get in the way. And of course working in the field recording plants, trees and clouds is always super fun – typically natural things are some of the best performers (and you don’t have to even bug them to play for you!) How did you become interested in the works of Shelby Lee Adams? JC: Having spent a lot of time immersed in Appalachian culture during my life, I was immediately drawn to his movie and work. He takes incredibly haunting photographs, that some have deemed controversial because they appear to take advantage of the subject matter. But the film about his life and the issues surrounding his photographs, “The True Meaning Of Pictures”, nudged me into deeper research about the musical history of that culture. How did this influence work its way into the album? JC: Some time aer watching the film, I ended up driving around to a slew of antique stores in small run-down towns in Kentucky looking for old instruments, records and trinkets that I could feed off of and soak into the music somehow. Some of the old vinyl featuring gospel hymns and porch side folk tunes are what helped me to come up with some of the song titles, melodies and feelings that went into “The Beautiful Nowhere”. That title itself kind of takes from the idea of rustic beauty that those tiny towns entail.
What was it in particular about Adam’s work that struck the chord? JC: Aside from the beauty of his photos, I found the persistent nature of his approach fascinating – he would spend years and years photographing an entire generation of one family. I’m inspired by artists who really embrace their work and who really stick with it, regardless of the critics crap and regardless of the ups and downs life brings. Do you avidly dislike music critics? My impression was you’d been fairly well treated by them? JC: I’ve certainly endured my fair share of thrown tomatoes. I think this is a good humbling and cathartic experience for an artist to deal with. And I certainly don’t dislike critics at all; there’s a necessary context for critical review. But I think this kind of review, especially in the indy circuit, can become shallow and pretentious very quickly. It’s a real cop-out for a reviewer to just speil about something they don’t like. The real challenge is for a reviewer to find something good within something they don’t like. I’m really interested in the Apallachian aspect of the project; I remember reading at one point that it had a strong influence on recorded music because people testing early phonographs and the like went out to record musicians from that area, and it bled into a lot of early recorded music from the US. Which songs do you think captured this element, and how did the elements you gathered come to play into the record? JC: What really inspired me about those old recordings was how live and raw they were. Many times the recorder would set up their gear right there on the front porch and those backwoods banjo players would just go to town so free spirited and natural like while the needle cut straight into that disc. I’m really inspired by that kind of fearlessness to be able to perform and record in such a live fashion. But people were far more fearless back then – they had to face much harder times; so much starvation, constant sickness and death. I think that kind of hard living made for much more passionate musical expressions – people really had to have a way to release! Do you think our relative comfort today has changed the type of music we produce? JC: Absolutely. Innovations in technology have made it so we don’t necessarily have to work as hard to achieve results that surpass the styles and standards of yesteryear. But with all this ease of use
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and the endless ocean of presets, a slew of lazy modern music has emerged like a bad disease. But I love that no matter how drowned in comfort the world becomes, people will always have the will to want and make good heart felt music. That’s just a part of our beautiful design… Can you still see the influence of Appallachian music in modern music today? Is the DNA still recognisable to you? JC: Those styles today are somewhat watered down I guess. Music tends to be so produced anymore that I think it’s harder to find folk or bluegrass music that can really capture the spirit of those old recordings. Those were one take wonders by truly unique people who lived in much different times. Also I think musicians back then were far less intimidated by the microphone. True, and I’ve heard it said that aer the players heard themselves played back, their style of playing changed. They’d never heard recorded music before, and actually hearing themselves played back affected the way they played. Does listening to the material you’ve recorded change the way you’ve developed as well? JC: Certainly so – it’s a healthy move for a musician to record themselves performing then listen back to it. You can get a more objective perspective of the music and it’s easier then to tell if the music is worth sharing with the world or not. Also, I like listening to my music with random people in the room listening. I certainly get a bit self-conscious but that allows me to have a more psychologically heightened awareness of what’s going on in the music. So that helps mistakes or improvements just pop right out of the songs… ............ The Beautiful Nowhere is released on or about July 1 on Hibernate, in a limited edition vinyl pressing of 250. There is also a limited edition CD of 200 copies, with a printed recycled pulp card placed inside handcut/folded/made textured organic mulberry paper sleeve hand stamped on the front; all kept safely in a hand sewn hessien bag. The album is mastered by Taylor Deupree, with artwork by Jason Corder & Jonathan Lees and includes photography by Iris Ann Sigurðardóttir. An instant digital download is included for both formats. - Alex Gibson
BITCHIN BAJAS WATER WRACKETS
Gentle organ intensities almost seem to entice naiads to surf across the water’s surface as synth waves create meditative marine melodies...
“As Greenaway pans across a river and its surrounding foliage, a narrator recounts mythical times of conquering armies and their relations to the stream, telling the history of civilisations and the history of the river’s surrounding forest. It is a rare film in which Greenaway evokes the mystical.” – Los Angeles Village View
to deliver six aquatic anthropological anthems of sublime ‘krautrock’ revisionism. Aer he watched just 30 seconds of a remake of ‘Water Wrackets’, by Benjamin Funke and Gabrielle Gopinath, Crain (sic) conceived what would eventually become the score to this original reinterpretation.
The reviewer refers to “Water Wrackets,” a 1975 Peter Greenaway film, which is an anthropological prank and an acute instance of the suspension of disbelief. A long forgotten, or yet-to-be-discovered, civilisation is completely materialised by a soundtrack and a convincing commentary suborning sorrowful images of streams, ponds, and lakes in a section of Wiltshire’s picturesque topography.
Gentle organ intensities almost seem to entice naiads to surf across the water’s surface as synth waves create meditative marine melodies. Rippling bass brooks, infinitesimal chord cascades, percussive pools and acoustic currents ebb and flow into a system of tonal tributaries and rhythm rivulets that converge to a form a delta of retrospective delight.
Cooper Crane (Cave) takes to the controls of his solo project Bitchin Bajas once again
Theoretically out tuned organs, synthesisers, electric pianos and percussion aspects, plus a deluge of delay
www.kallistei-editions.com
are intuitively intermixed to form rewarding and satisfying minimal works of improvisational intonation. Despite the complexity and sophistication of Water Wrackets, it is very easy to listen to and enjoy these polyphonic and timbral integrations. A sublimely styled and contemplative album of aqueous analogue harmonies and cyclical arpeggiations that is beautifully constructed by an artist who clearly comprehends the importance of understanding the debt that all modern ambient artists owe to the pioneers of Deutsche Elektronische Musik. Sehr gut! - Dean Rocker
NATURAL SNOW BUILDINGS CHANTS OF NIFLHEIM
Whence the duality of existence, the equilibrium of tension, which the world powers can only hope to counterfeit...
One of the nine domiciles of Norse mythology, Niflheim is an underworld, a world of darkness, a place for those who have died because of illness or old age. Niflheim sits at the third root of Yggdrasil, the vast tree of ash that supports all of the universe, “the mighty tree moist with white dews.” Waiting in a pit of serpents near this third root is the “wyrm,” the dragon Nidhogg, which feeds on the the dead at the cauldron Hvergelmir, the source of all rivers of the world. Nidhogg sends the squirrel Ratatosk up the root of Yggdrasil to deliver messages of slanderous gossip to a huge unnamed eagle, perched atop the great ash. The eagle returns the squirrel to the wyrm, with his own taunts. Whence the duality of existence, the equilibrium of tension, which the world powers can only hope to counterfeit. The latest installment by French experimental folk duo Natural Snow Buildings seeks to map this unintuitive and breathtaking place. Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte — who record individually as Twinsistermoon and Isengrind — have largely worked in obscurity: seldom performing live, rarely submitting to interviews, dialing in only by way of extremely limited self-releases. Those of us who have bemoaned some recent editions of 200 ought to try on The Winter Ray for size, limited, as it was, to “less than 15 copies.” The sound is whimsical, ever-changing, and therefore a bit difficult to define: think drone, only a high-concept, low-key, oen noisy, and eastern-inspired drone. There are no synthesizers here, and few effects,
and not for the sake of aesthetic haughtiness, either. The duo claims instead that trappings such as these don’t fit within the budget. Instead, their arsenal boasts drum circle, tampura, guitar, and theremin. Track names like “The Accidental Remote Viewer,” “Cockmotherfighting” and “With A Stolen Red Lipstick Bible On Her Side” speak to their prankster humor and sometimes slapdash themes (by this measure, Chants of Niflheim is something of a departure). Not shoegaze. Sandalgaze. With a glimmer in the eye, one that just might be a reflection of Supernova 1604. Chants of Niflheim opens with Part I of the title cut: an eight-minute exploration into space-temptress vocals and open-flame string drone (to clarify the former point: that spectral falsetto belongs to Ameziane, the male half of this co-ed pairing). The cosmic background radiation diffuses just aer the track’s midpoint, and a rush of cymbals predicts a gypsy march, 80 BPM of slow percussion and peaceable assembly. To be sure, this is an album of tangents, which become the ends in themselves, not just the means. (“Exotic ethnodrones,” indeed.) Part II of “Chants” is something of a departure from the opening half (the exaggerated 17-minute intermission “Templars Ritual” could distract anyone from nearly anything, but more on that point in a moment). As always, the terrain is burning string drone, with space-beacon overgrowth. But here, blinking guitar notes replace the siren call, and a faraway device
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hum stands in for the more standard percussion. Yet this is perhaps the most conventional of the four tracks presented here: a warm, driing, pulsing, out-of-time piece, and highly visual, too. Just close your eyes and watch. “Templars Ritual” is a low-volume kitchen sink clamor, hypnotic, set to waves. “Templars” is a well-laid bridge between the two halves of “Chants of Niflheim,” boasting the slightly dissonant quirkiness of the former and the enveloping heat of the latter. But the real treat here is the closing track, which not only concludes the work, but summarizes it. Opening with zoom-lens acoustic guitar and Ameziane’s nostalgic, slightly creepy vocals, “H. Scudder” — which, it seems likely, is named aer this H. Scudder — soon abandons the pretense of verse-bridgeverse, re-introducing the drone and assorted wanderings for one last 11minute submersion. Gularte and Ameziane consult the star charts as always, but allow the instruments plenty of breathing room here, namely a serene and altogetherrecognizable guitar, and the curried haze of tanpura. So, does the new album succeed in conjuring images of the steed of Odin, the hammer of Thor, and The Dripping Hall? That much is up to you. But earlier we described the world of Niflheim as an “unintuitive and breathtaking place,” and Chants of Niflheim plays as exactly that. - Fred Nolan
LOOKING BACK BLEEDING HEART NARRATIVE - TONGUE TANGLED HAIR
Managing to walk the tight-rope between folk-pop sensibility and more extreme elements with skill...
Bleeding Heart Narrative’s debut album “all that was missing we never had in the world” was also the first release for London-based label Tartaruga Records in March 2008. The eleven tracks quickly won critical acclaim for their rich orchestral drones and layered piano and guitar. Follow-up record “Tongue Tangled Hair” arrived a year and a half later with a brighter, more song-based approach, while retaining the lush instrumentation and dramatic soundscapes of its predecessor. Musical comparisons to Thee Silver Mount Zion and other acts from Constellation stable are easy enough to make, and the move towards a greater use of vocals on “Tongue Tangled Hair” mirrors the evolution of the aforementioned Canadians.
Another point of commonality between Bleeding Heart Narrative and their Montreal cohorts is that despite the inventive variety of arrangements, “Tongue Tangled Hair” is built around a small number of melodic phrases, sometimes inverted, sometimes with a different rhythm or time signature, but recognisable nonetheless. As the album progresses, these phrases pop up again and again in a wealth of different guises, halfremembered faces or fragments of a dream. As a result, the album feels strangely familiar even on first listen, like a cottage you may have stayed in once, or a person you might have met. The band’s guitar-driven sound is grandiose, embellished with imaginative
www.tartarugarecords.com www.bleedingheartnarrative.com
string arrangements, analogue synths, and multi-tracked vocals. Gentle riffs give way to thunderous distortion in tracks such as “David Foster Wallace” and “The Cartographer”; numbers such as “Henry Box Brown” and “Colour Turns Colours” find the band on a ‘foot-tapping feelgood’ setting. While there is nothing strikingly original about Bleeding Heart Narrative’s approach, they manage to walk the tightrope between folk-pop sensibility and more extreme elements with skill, reaching places both abstract and intense without ever losing the ear for a good tune. It is this mix of experimentation and plaintiveness that makes “Tongue Tangled Hair” such a compelling album. - Nathan Thomas
JEAN-PHILIPPE COLLARD-NEVEN BETWEEN THE LINES
There is a pre-self-conscious resiliency that recognises the impermanence of everything....
Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven’s ‘Between the Lines’ is the Belgian pianist’s latest album, and his first for the flau label. A collection of “bits of melodies, halffinished pieces…” according to the onesheet, it fits in line with his previous body of work, which has revelled in the idea of improvisation and the incomplete. Bits and halves as it may be, “Between the Lines” is an immersive collection of songs that manages an incredibly diverse range of emotions and ideas. Opening song “Leaving Valparaiso” is fittingly titled as the listener is in a sense leaving and becoming immersed in JeanPhilippe’s world for the next 50+ minutes. From note one the album has a transportive quality, and the place it transports us to is a world childlike and innocent even in its darkest moments. In the one sheet Collard-Neven suggests these pieces recall his childhood in that they come so ‘naturally, effortlessly’, from a sort of pre-self-conscious state, and that idea is clearly evident in the music. From the opening notes of the very first song this listener felt a sort of kinship between ‘Between the Lines’ and Hayao Miyazaki’s portrayal of children in his films (Porco Rosso for example). Both Miyazaki and Collard-Neven’s portrayal of childhood is wide-eyed, taking life as it is for now and sorting the mess out later. At times Collard-Neven’s work here reminds one of legendary Charlie Brown composer Vince
Guaraldi mixed with Yann Tiersen. No small feat to bring the worlds of those two composers together, and fittingly those two artists are also known for bringing a childlike sense of wonder to their own work.
impermanence of everything. It’s a scary idea as you get older, but completely liberating as a child where that impermanence frees you to be someone new and different from one moment to the next.
The songs on ‘Between the Lines’ are, as individual pieces, all quite unique, so much so it’s impressive how little the man repeats himself. Even the four-part suite ‘Falling Star’ is comprised of four very different movements. All of the songs on the album are built around piano with Jean-Philippe occasionally sneaking in human voice by humming along with his own melodies. There is something distinctly cinematic, particularly reminiscent of French cinema, to his work here as well. Even the more sombre pieces on the album have a joie de vivre to them. Most artists when it comes to doing sombre, particularly with a solo piano piece, tend to slow things down and make it a little sparse. Collard-Neven, on the other hand keeps the energy level up, lending the music a matter-of-fact quality, suggesting that sombre or upliing, it’s all a celebration of life. And that is one thing that makes this album stand out: where many artists strip things down for some introspective, inward gazing work, his work is introspective yet outward focused. Again, that idea of the pieces being childlike is fitting in that there is a pre-selfconscious resiliency that recognizes the
“Between the Lines” comes to us via the flau label and it’s one of those releases that on the one hand seems like an odd choice for the label, yet on the other makes perfect sense. It represents a sort of stripping down of the sonic and emotive terrain of the label to reveal its inner workings. As with most music from flau it combines genuine emotion with a sense of playfulness. ‘Between the Lines’ is one of those albums so good and so natural you almost take for granted the genuine skill behind it. Sure, Collard-Neven may be wearing a few influences on his sleeve, but he openly embraces that. In order for him to create this work he had to let go of that side of himself that second-guesses everything, and to do so he had to rediscover that childlike sense of wonder in himself, that inner place that exists without judgement or expectation. In a musical landscape where it oen feels like everything daring must be dark, CollardNeven embraces the light. If the listener is willing to do the same they will find a treasure of an album within.
www.collardneven.com www.flau.jp
- Brendan Moore
ANNELIES/RICHARD YOUNGS SPLIT SERIES VOL.3
Monseré ensures there is a deviation from her lyrical numbers, whilst maintaining a consistency in her attention to sound creation...
If one were to look for a single word that best summarises this latest entry into the three:four split series, variation would be a worthy winner. For the record, which is shared between two highly revered musicians of the experimental sound sphere is one that embodies multiple characteristics of the word’s very definition. On the one hand are a series of tracks composed by multi-instrumentalist Annelies Monseré. Here, the artist produces five takes on the same formula, offering varied compositions of the same song, with each take built through different instrumentation and tone. The song, which is entitled ‘Sand’ is consistent with other Annelies Monseré works, offering eerie and melancholic notes throughout. On three versions of the song, Monseré makes sure her enchanted voice is entwined with
the unusual instrumentation that forms the backdrop to her melodies. These songs are built around guitar, piano and organ and with each version one feels an overriding sense of beauty and sorrow. The two other takes are much shorter, instrumental constructions. Using melodica and cello respectively, Monseré ensures there is a deviation from her lyrical numbers, whilst maintaining a consistency in her attention to sound creation. A solitary song by Richard Youngs also contributes to this album, whilst still adhering to our word of choice. For not only does this near ten minute song contrast from the much shorter compositions provided by Annelies Monseré, but it also highlights a musician whose work has become synonymous with altered form. On this song Richard’s voice, which most listeners would expect to loop
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around his acoustic backdrop, remains untouched for the most part. There may be traces of an echo, but at large his voice adds grace to an effervescent use of electronic guitar that bounces and hovers around the song like light constantly and continually being reflected off an infinite wall of mirrors. In what is the third entry into the three:four series, the label have attracted two multitalented composers and presented them with a platform to experiment. The result is again best summed up by that single word, for it is the variation of the music produced here that makes this record a noteworthy release. - Josh Atkin
NEW SERIES FRAMEWORK 4 NOVI_SAD
Slowly shiing tones and rhythmic pulse lend an underlying urgency to the layered field recordings...
As part of Sub Rosa’s ongoing New Series Framework project comes Inhumane Humans, the latest release from Thanasis Kaproulias’ solo project Novi_sad… Opening track ‘Srebrenica’ contrasts the gently hypnotic sounds of nature against more antagonistic man-made sounds. We are greeted by the gentle chirrup of insects before an unsettling rumbling creeps in, disrupting the previous calm. Gradually the man-made elements begin to appear; a morse signal, a harsh intermittent buzzing all flitting throughout the soundscape. All momentarily die away to reveal a guitar drone, unflinching throughout the interruptions of morse signal and the return of the underlying bass rumble. Abrasive jolts of static appear from nowhere, tearing through the meditative nature of the drone. Despite all of Kaproulias’ field recordings for this piece being made in Athens and
Olympia, the title and subject matter comes from the 1995 massacre on the Bosnian village of Srebrenica. The fragmented vocal we hear is that of a rape victim describing her experience to a psychologist; she was pregnant at the time of the attack and her panicked voice and fragmented screams against the ever increasing intensity of the soundscape make for difficult listening. The woman’s screams are echoed by a distorted guitar, the morse signal becomes more rhythmic as though forming a repeated cry for help while the guitar drone continues, relentlessly. The shorter ‘Aircra Noises’ consists of numerous recordings made on flights throughout Europe, Canada and the US as well as war planes taking off and landing at airports in Greece. As a modified version of previous installation work ‘Silence, Aircar Noises and Harmonies in Pain’, ‘Aircra
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Noises’ feels a much more considered work with more dynamic variation allowing space for individual sounds to come through. The slowly shiing tones and rhythmic pulse lend an underlying urgency to the layered field recordings. Personally I don’t find this a pleasant listen; there are some interesting ideas at work but ultimately it falls short of the potential of such a premise. The intensely moving story behind ‘Srebrenica’ gets somehow lost within the formula, the woman’s voice becoming just another nameless field recording buried under an onslaught of noise. Having said that, with a title such as Inhumane Humans there is little surprise that this isn’t exactly a joyful album and within the realms of noise-based field recording work Novi_sad certainly delivers. - Katie English
JOINT VENTURE HUMANITY, INTEGRITY, SINCERITY (AND THE MASS AVANT-GARDE)
Energy is the predominant theme; loud guitars, thumping drums, pulsing electronic layers – all recorded in an honest and vibrant way, the antithesis of slick...
Enigmatic French label Joint Venture and sister imprint Twin Daisies have recently impressed with a stream of intriguing releases from several acts, including Charles Eric Charrier, Fissa Fissa and also Lokka, the band that served as the catalyst for the creation of the label. With a lo-fi, under-produced yet adventurous ethic, the distinctive releases showcase a brash and fearless roster certain to appeal to those that want their music a little bit more real.
‘L’Homme’, which has recently been followed up by ‘L’Essentiel’, available now on the FissaFissa Bandcamp site.
Energy is the predominant theme; loud guitars, thumping drums, pulsing electronic layers – all recorded in an honest and vibrant way, the antithesis of slick. The bands on the roster nail down an indefinable honesty with elements of post rock, electronica and math, all mixed with a surprisingly literate punk aesthetic. The most obvious example of this would be Charles Eric Charrier’s follow up to ‘Silver’, the recently released ‘Oldman’. A mix of multitracked raw bass and French haiku, the records flaunts the conventional wisdom of sound design and revels in its own character.
(Note: all errors or garbling of syntax in the translation of Nico’s responses is the error of the author not the respondent, and I’d also like to thank Nico for his patience in allowing me to try to bring his words to light.)
Fans of that release would be well advised to spend a few minutes on the Joint Venture site getting to know its music player; there’s a choice selection of standout tracks indicating a killer back catalogue. Chief amongst those is the Lokka album ‘Gold & Wax’, produced by Charrier. The ten track album kicks off with the stellar title track and improves further from there. Another standout is FissaFissa’s four track
Created out of his frustration with dealing with the conventional road of music distribution, Lokka drummer and label pilot Nicholas Richard details some of the motivations, frustrations and celebrations involved in paving your own way in a fickle and confused industry.
How long has Joint Venture been running? How did the label start? Joint Venture is a young record label, it was set up in late 2009 in order to release “Gold & Wax”, the first album of our band Lokka, an album produced by Charles-Eric Charrier. Because we didn’t want to wait for record label answers, and because we were impatient to release “Gold & Wax”, we did it by ourselves. We were already experienced, for several years we have released “Molecules 5″, an “electro-dub” compilation (“electro dub”, in the broadest sense of the word year aer year), so it was not new for us, it was quite a logical process. Is there a release on the label that has surprised you with the reaction it has had?
It’s hard to say… for an album like “Gold & Wax”, we expected clear cut reactions because of some of the musical/ production choices we used… and we were right to expect that, that was what happened! For “Oldman”, the first reactions have been really positive and here also, to be honest, we are not that surprised. We worked on this album for more than a year so we know it well and we felt that he was as clear and limpid as a great album, an album that can touch people, out of musical style matter. How long have Lokka been around for? Lokka have existed since 2007 but Fred (on guitar), Den (on computer/synthe/and more) and me (on drums) we have known each other for a long time, we have played together for years. Sam (on bass) joined us when we came to Nantes, Lokka was born at that time. With our previous band we played a kind of psychedelic/grunge rock, then dub music. With Lokka, we came back to something close to “rock” music and we get on with when we recorded with Charles-Eric. The last year has been very constructive, our music kept evolving. Fred began to sing, which for guys who mostly play instrumental music is a big revolution. Late June, we will enter the studio, more than two years aer recording “Gold & Wax”, excitement rises up, we are very impatient to live this experience again, like kids waiting for their gis during Christmas night!
What do you have planned for the new Lokka record? We enter studio with around ten songs, major parts are written, for the rest of the songs we have guidelines, we know in which direction we want to bring them. It will be a quick recording, only 2 recording sessions, 2 or 3 days each time, in a small studio of a friend, so it’s not luxurious conditions but we hope to take advantage of it in the way we will play and the sound we will get. For the time being, we are rushing headlong for all that, we will have to take a step back to take perspective of the album but we begin to have some idea on what will or what should be the record. It’s always difficult to put these kind of sensations into words but we feel that this album will be warm, sharp, “majestic”, wrathful and calm, “pop” and noisy, so then a contrasting album. It remains to face the studio test! Then, is this album will be released on Joint Venture or not? We don’t know yet, it depends on a lot of things. How did Charles come to produce “Gold & Wax”? We went to a Lena & the Floating Roots Orchestra’s show, a kind of all-star band which plays a kind of orchestral dub music, led by Mathias Delplanque, with CharlesEric on bass, Rob Mazurek on trumpet, Rasim Biyikli (half of the duo MAN) on piano, etc. It was the first time we saw musicians playing that way, there was a strong musical communication between them, very impressive, and a real pleasure to be on the stage, sharing their music with
the audience! Aer such a show, we thanked them through the internet and social networks. Some time later, Charles invited us to have a drink to make acquaintance and during this first meeting the idea was born to record an album produced by Charles. You found it slow having to wait for replies from labels? So you started the label in frustration? The idea to record with Charles came quickly, the rehearsal was quick too, we recorded in a few days and mixed also. So we were in an “urgent” process, energetic, and all of a sudden we then had to wait 6 months or more for a reply, it was quite unpleasant. So aer a few months, rather than still waiting for the reply, we decided to take some initiatives. It’s true that ideally we would have preferred to find a record label which took care of the album, while we could stay focused on the music, but working on an album, following it since the beginning to the end, from the rehearsals to the art work and finally release it, that’s a real pleasure! Unfortunately, promotion and selling is what follows and that was not (it’s still not?) our main strength… Is it common to have to wait for a reply from a label for 6 months? From our point of view, it’s not such exceptional… there is such an amount of bands that record labels are weighed down with proposals, just as concert halls are. Close to us, in the office of the head of a concert hall we saw a huge pile of “unlistened” discs on the floor, a kind of
elephant’s graveyard, it was the perfect image of our times, the opulence and the impossibility to face it. But of course, it depends on your fame, so it can go quickly, or it can drag on indefinitely. Personally, aer recording Sidi Touré, I sent about fiy records, I barely got five answers, though this album was great, but the musician was unknown, I’m persuaded that a part of these records wander in a kind of “un-listened” land… but six month aer my first mail, as I was taking the first steps to release this album by myself, I get an email from Thrill Jockey in which they said they wanted to release it! How has Charles’ “Oldman” been received in France? The reception is very positive! People from various background like this album, music lover or “non-specialist”, and that’s a real pleasure and one of our undisclosed goals for this kind of release, to propose a popular “quality music” or a quality “popular music”, away from elitism and mercantilism… On the internet or in the press, the first reviews are really positive, almost ecstatic, they talk about a magnum opus, a precious musician, a white griot, an amazing, fascinating album…. It’s the beginning of our promotional work, we are waiting for some more reviews. It’s a real pleasure to read these reviews but that’s not our purpose – that’s a meaning, a light to allow us to share Charles’ music with as many people as possible, the important thing is the listener.
Do you think that people think of music differently now it is sold as a loss leader? Do you think people value it less because of that? For sure! Maybe it’s due to the original sin of the recorded music, accentuated by the easiness to record thanks to home-studio. Music, hitherto immaterial, became an object, then a mass market product, it went from culture to commerce and industry, so, without mentioning music quality itself, the way that listener feels it has obviously changed. Paradoxically, music is more important that ever whilst it became almost inaudible. Music is omnipresent in people life, we listen to it everywhere, everytime, at any time but in
the long run it became something like a background noise, a tinnitus. Of course this is the dark side… In an opposite movement (complementary?), music became “retail”, thanks to enthusiasts, small artisans and, nowadays, thanks to the internet. We have access to cultures, music, stories hitherto inaccessible to the largest number possible, a kind of pooling of treasures of humanity, that’s a incredible chance to have at our fingertips the diversity of the world and the human. Humanity has everything to gain in preserving this diversity, this is not the case for the industry, which has everything
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to gain in standardization culture. It doesn’t exist in English version yet but the Joint Venture “manifesto” questions this. We ape investors, head of companies, capitalism even communism’s languages, in order to serve the tuck-shop, the goal is to “diversify” as a conglomerate as Hyundaï, “crasmen-ly”! ........... Integrity is a dwindling commodity in the world of music. Fans of it would be advised to familiarize themselves with Joint Venture. - Alex Gibson
BENGALFUEL EDGEMERE
The occult has seen many perversions in its centuries of land-flattening, theory smuggling, lip sealing, pressure...
What’s in a name? Grab a few letters, rearrange, receive a new impulse, collage your meaning, glue words so they represent duality sprite. With Bengalfuel, apt prospects: their ghost and spirit influences merged with a primal austerity; ambience for train rides; running away from empirical tiger; muscularity lodged; primed for battle but no teeth on edge. Lou DiBenedetto and Joe LiTrenta’s chinadelicate Ambient, free of secularity taint, perfectly suited to Hibernate’s Jonathan Lees, a regular subversive of art for art’s sake, releasing some off-kilter surprises since the label emerged from the electroacoustic underground two years back; pre Rural Colours’ “Feldspar” by Lou (Dentist solo) and Joe (DocDeem). Remnants might shatter into a Jehova’s Witness manual on mankind, as no matter how many holy endorsements, quality of the actions bestowed are critical; everything else is just clutter, whereas HB have their hearts on sleeve to great feel. The occult has seen many perversions in its centuries of land-flattening, theory smuggling, lip sealing, pressure applying, from re-interpreted biblical tales that treacherous people will be torn away from earth, to paranormal experiences with
psychotropic drugs from the Amazon. If one’s thing’s clear from the outset of “Edgemere”, it’s that there’s a discernably minimalistic, to the bone, vaccuum going to the cleaners. The pair are supplementing really rich base materials, as if the subjects of life, death and intermediary “making peace with tormented souls” Lees explains, upholds to a compromising, strangely empty vibe, pleasing you with light overspray, as befits Joe’s haunted house that early Bengalfuel was conducted in. “Braindit (Cathedral)” has that majestic room-filling Dead Texan analogue to a tee, nevertheless no hologram. My personal criteria for great drone enacts repeat / synergy / repeat / modify, a three-tier spectrum plus output, that guarantees to a good signing ear what makes the grade longevity-wise. Not always what satisfies the producer as a short-term, prolificity-and-knuckling-down intertwined divide. Be afraid of committing to anything, likewise, and you’re shortsightedly wearing brown paper bag overhead, blinded of virtue and any benefits. “Exorcised” cuts your shield with filed scissors: paddling ambience layers; leaving you thoughtfully vulnerable for the mind to dri. Intentional?
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Conjecture open, despite Bengalfuel’s move to a lake area for recording. The simplicity swings your lobes physical to verbal, le and right hemisphere, offering and retraction. Christopher Bissonnette’s “In Between Words” in similar ballpark; shortly looped micro-ambiences, very natural and specifically emotive. The track sits nicely on the CD-R but would feel crass out of context – track one’s warmth outstrips its subtle charms, and it’s abjected of responsibility to resolve. “Mad Daddy Clawbone” ups the intensity with a filtered breakbeat resonating up and under a sparse semi-chord, and this is where the active listening really comes alive. Then just as you’re standing up, “Shadow Demon” sits you still for an episode of droning me, droning you, altering key from “Braindit…” and acting loveable bookend to an uneven, very engaging mini-set. If we’re to take one thing from the name Bengalfuel, then it should on more inspection be fright suspended. Come brush yourself off to DiBenedetto and LiTrenta’s glomerating detox – you’ll forget life’s malice in the process. - Mick Buckingham
BILLY GOMBERG QUIET BARRIER
Oen attempted and yet rarely achieved, Gomberg manages to maintain a very human element throughout the work...
With several solo releases and collaborations under his belt, sound artist Billy Gomberg follows on from 2009′s Flyover Sound collaboration with Ohesky with Quiet Barrier, a solo work that provides a meditative exploration of purely electronic soundscapes and textures Opening track ‘Instants’ offers an array of flickering sonics, with various timbres weaving amongst each other. From disjointed square waves to shimmering drones and intermittent clicks it sets the ground for this surprisingly organic sounding album. Although all the sounds heard on this release are created electronically there is no stylised perfection at work here, Gomberg very much taking the part of musician over programmer.
As suggested by the title, ‘Partial to Appearance’ is a driing study of harmonics, moving from dense, low tones to high frequency textures so gradually that attention is never drawn to the change of sound, simply allowing the listener to be immersed in the rich textures. Throughout the album, various processed waveforms float serenely through a background chatter of static and glitches, the disjointed and improvised nature always maintaining the human qualities of the music. The somnambulant quality of tracks such as ‘Night With Cheap Stars’ allow the listener room to hear the minutiae of sounds at work here. It is hard to make something that is both sparse and immersive and yet Gomberg manages it, creating a cocoon like feeling with a
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minimum of sound. In many of these works Gomberg conveys a sense of space; for instance, the oddly watery textures of the aptly titled ‘Snow’ bring to mind a gentle thaw, the melting ice slowly dripping from rooops. Closing track ‘The Ends of Breaths’ gently brings the album to a static close with occasional pulses appearing throughout a minimal texture of grainy tones and low frequency rumbles. All in all a superb study in electronic warmth. Oen attempted and yet rarely achieved, Gomberg manages to maintain a very human element throughout the work, creating a beautiful sound source that conveys a strong atmosphere within minimalistic aesthetics. - Katie English
DIAMOND CATALOG MAGNIFIED PALETTE
Now with fusions of any kind, you need to be sure of tangibility, time and persuasion to achieve instant goals...
Minimal and Industrial Techno developing a skin allergy with Ambient drone; perplexing the root hairs’ braindance operatics; structural cutting technology taken to extremes, whistling in the wind of comedown rave and full-on bass weight mind-bender – on Pat Maherr and Lala Conchita’s debut LP, it’s insofar a query of source: diamond released from the dirt, cracked into a hundred shimmering pieces and fed into the pair’s sequencers – a distillation of former avant essence working wonders perhaps? Let’s be fair here: this is no hands-in-theair, departing to grave record – it’s far too restless and grimy for that. It’s more like a Feltham first-timer drug binge – sending you on loop just by thinking, digging nails deep into your pores to extract virginal, innocent red for which to butter Noise toasties. All these little fragments; loose hitpoints leaping off 4/16 bar parameter ladders – do beats crash at any point? A side “Slith’d On” threatens to until close, then”Valvernation”, an F1 pit stop, slows to foot-skanking Upsetters Dub stomp; Arovane passing fairytale notes to the shadow technicians before him. Bracing the B side, “Ancestral Comprehension And Acrid Predictions”, it’s worth considering certainty of purpose.
Lala and Pat seem hell-bent on summoning textural psychokinesis – complex accentuation here, small information clusters therein, hitherto a shamanistic grit to the four tracks as they evolve, like they’re channelling disturbed spirits. This magnifies its’ own wayward energy directors. Any totalitarianism of rave, as these tracks imply, built from and cut off at monetary greed: DJs; overpriced venue hiring; awkward locations; disparaged market. And under-radar Techno always chiselled what was right and wrong into fairly amicable boxes, musical experientials and the taste for breaks from Rock, hipster indie culture (Trance, crunk et al): the rise of masquerading politically correct junctures. With Diamond Catalog, the success lies not so much in the postmodern sonic irony – drum machines tee-totalling in contrapuntal Ker-Plunk, opposing diamonds being forever – as understanding that resisting track flow on behalf of the producers, works detrimentally as regards trying to deflect that flow. Title-based arrogance, also – it’s a conduit of Pat’s Indignant Senility moniker for names predicting such menacing, prone-to-explosion work. That’s not to say “…And Acrid Predictions” is euphorically volatile; it’s darkside Drum
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& Bass mixed with a soer percussive altitude; alacadbra they pull it off. For all propulsion and paradoxically changeable tendencies, though, the pieces’ pulse moves straight as a paper plane: inherently as a dance hybrid – and positively as an alchemy beyond straightahead beat science. Now with fusions of any kind, you need to be sure of tangibility, time and persuasion to achieve instant goals. Otherwise tunes sit on hard drives, rotting as chopped up carcasses, where the inspiration becomes cynically transparent. In this LP, I can tell much has gone into it by the dense sound constructions alone, but looking at the contributors’ list: Type’s John Twells for pre-mastering and clean-up, session engineering in Holywood and Oregon, suggests interplanetary opposites, which actually translates on record. “Aries Viewlight” as exit point is a real touchdown for the duo as they navigate holodeck Deep Space Nine-style – oasis ambience cushioning a basketball 4/4 oeat, in truly nipping soundbite of getting-outthere music, and enough to feed more than an everlasting wormhole. Beaming up Prince not included, but maybe that’s a good thing. - Mick Buckingham
RICHARD GINNS SEA CHANGE
Artistically, as anywhere else, nostalgia is indeed a curious and dangerous thing...
Nostalgia is a curious and dangerous thing. Its essential condition – memorialising past events, beautifying them into an idealised rendition of the original – is a kind of historical plastic surgery, and its prevalence in contemporary culture shows no sign of abating. At its best, in the realm of the hauntological, it can become a sharp, incisive exploration of half-remembered memories, in the process losing the pretence that nostalgia, unwittingly but unerringly, inflicts on its subject. At its worst, in the realm of Hipstamatic and the neo-Polaroid, it becomes a cosmetic conceit, a wistful yet phony affectation, positing the notion that things were better or more lovely ‘once upon a time’. Richard Ginns’ Sea Change exists somewhere between these poles, although more at the Hipstamatic end of the continuum (the artwork features precisely this kind of imagery). Ginns acknowledges that his foray into “the memory of childhood visits to the seaside” is “completely personal”, and that truth presents a further difficulty emanating from nostalgia: in some ways it is so utterly personal that one can barely hope to engage without resorting to nostalgia of our own, making for a rather diffuse, even faintly solipsistic kind of empathy. This crystallises in Ginns’ hope that such imagery “produces a sensation of fondness and memory”; notwithstanding the fact that ‘memory’ isn’t a sensation, the kind of ‘fondness’ of which he speaks is,
again, entirely personal, and he cannot rely on the fact that, merely by presenting the listener with ostensibly loaded material, we will instinctively relate to it and be drawn into his memories as though they were our own. Artistically, as anywhere else, nostalgia is indeed a curious and dangerous thing. Beyond these conceptual obstacles, the six tracks on Sea Change function as variations on a theme. Ginns has restricted his sonic palette to a three-fold collection of timbres, two of which are abstract – wooden, percussive sounds and amorphous electronic drones – the third being an acoustic guitar. Opening track “Riverbank” establishes the outlook for the album as a whole, percussive knocks blending into and serving to expand the so plucked sounds of the guitar, while an omnipresent drone undulates between hovering quietly at a distance and powerfully throbbing in the foreground. The remaining five tracks do essentially the same thing, so perhaps a better descriptor than ‘variations’ is to liken them to paintings of the same thing from different vantage points. Ginns’ palette means that each track displays a marked contrast between hard and so sounds, but as already mentioned, the boundaries between them are oen nicely obscured. All the same, Richard Ginns’ dependence on the act of nostalgia as an emotional vehicle is, to some extent, his undoing. On the one hand, there’s a sense of restraint
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here that is pleasant to experience – Ginns isn’t interested in trying to grab our attention – but the flipside is that the music has an eternally introductory quality to it, forever suggesting we might be going somewhere, but ultimately moving in rather tiny circles, walking on eggshells. One can’t help feeling, with all the genteel washes and pastel sonic shadings, it’s all rather inconsequential: something begins, it happens, it ends – but did it really matter? There are times when Ginns does something different, and it causes everything momentarily to li. The opening of fourth track “Point Dunes” is the most striking, where digitally slowed-down sounds glisten like small, half-lit edifices. The close interplay of dissonant clashes and celesta in the final, title track is another example, enlivening and in every sense sitting in relief to everything around them. But overall, these six tracks are akin to the kind of pale yellow watercolour vignettes one finds in any small gallery in any English seaside town. They’re so, they’re comfortable, they’re personal, but they keep the audience at a distance in all but the most superficial way. Sea Change is by no means a bad album, but one can only give muted praise to an album that so doggedly refuses to venture beyond its comfort zone, while simultaneously expecting instant empathy for something so uniquely personal. - Simon Cummings
MACHINIST OF WHAT ONCE WAS
Slowly but constantly on the move, a measured pace: gliding, floating, sailing, treading...
A steady ostinato pulse: footsteps in a dark alley, perhaps, or the clatter of train wheels. A sense of travel: open fields, barren deserts, caverns deep underground. Staring out of the window as the miles slip by. Rumble of engines, swoosh of oars. Slowly but constantly on the move, a measured pace: gliding, floating, sailing, treading. Making one’s way through the ever-changing city. “Of What Once Was” is the fourth album by Dutch musician Zeno van den Broek under the Machinist moniker, and is held together by regular rhythmic pulses and drones that provide the base for a range of sonic experimentations. The plodding ‘D’ of first track ‘Mono Tone in D’ was inspired by Yves Klein’s “Monotone Symphony”, a composition requiring a chamber orchestra to play the same note for twenty
minutes, followed by twenty minutes’ silence. In Machinist’s compositions, the pulses and drones thread a path through layers of thick, howling guitar , muted ambient sounds and field recordings. The music has a spatiality all of its own, formed and modulated by the careful arranging of layers; an approach influenced by van den Broek’s work as an urban architect. At the same time, it evokes a transit of spaces remembered and imagined. The sense of travel is ultimately one of travelling inside oneself. While the album draws on various different sound sources, from computer-generated synths to amplifier hum and feedback, the underlying constant throughout both of the album’s long tracks is the electric guitar. Van den Broek coaxes a wide palette of sounds from the instrument,
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from thick clouds of collapsing distortion to gentle shimmering washes and resonant twangs. For him, the guitar is not just another way of generating noise: he shows a deep appreciation for its distinctive tonal qualities and allows them to shine through, even in the most earsplitting overdrive. This is Amsterdam-based Moving Furniture Records’ second CD release aer a slate of impressive CD-Rs. Judging by the quality here, this certainly looks like a label to watch. If it’s true that the best music engages our imaginations as much as our senses, Machinist’s “Of What Once Was” is up there with the best. - Nathan Thomas
JUSTIN VARIS W/KEVIN PONTO MOUNTAINS
Varis edits and manipulates the audio until near destruction, encouraging the listener to appraise each moment afresh...
Justin Varis is an American musician and composer who currently resides in Los Angeles. Inspired by the rich and varied history of musique concrete, Varis has recently been pursuing minimal, single instrument composition – in this case, the piano. The artists offerings, both under his own name and as Claudia, have featured on numerous compilations and on labels such as Frozen Elephants Music and Audiobulb Records. Varis is joined here with Kevin Ponto, though little information is given as to how large his role is here. Mountains begins with ten long seconds of silence and this is apt, since at times, the music within this EP length release is as much about what is not played, as what is, and those opening moments of nothingness serve to focus the mind for what is to come.
A composition, simply titled F, introduces Mountains and Varis treats the listener to a melodic piano refrain which could form the beginning of a very tuneful ballad. This straight path to song is soon le behind however and the artist instead takes strong and confident strides into unexplored terrain. Varis chooses to manipulate the almost careless-sounding notes into something else, something far more deliberate.
would be missing the point, so it is far better to relax and enjoy the performance. Once one gives in to passive listening, complex patterns and organic randomness fit together much more fully. Musique Concrete is a familiar and much respected influence cited by many musicians, but seldom does an artist properly encapsulate the character of what one imagines those French pioneers of sound were striving for.
Working with piano and with the ambience created by sound waves reflecting off surfaces and into the microphone’s diaphragm, Varis edits and manipulates the audio until near destruction, encouraging the listener to appraise each moment afresh. At first, the notes feel almost too jarring and the mind seeks to collate them into pattern, but to do so
Attempts at highly conceptual work such as this can all too easily fall flat on their face, but Justin Varis’s measured approach pays off and the artist gives rise to a work which walks a line between melody and sound, this is true abstract composing and it is compelling.
www.audiomoves.com
- Adam Williams
CLEM LEEK HOME AGAIN: LIVE SESSIONS
The sound of a solo piano played with such devotion is inevitably timeless, as though it could have floated in though the door of a reverie...
In a short space of time Clem Leek has carved a reputation for himself as a composer of rich, panoramic drones and soundscapes, a reputation bolstered by last year’s excellent album “Holly Lane” for Hibernate. However, those familiar with his recent work may as yet be unaware that the English musician is also a very fine piano player. The seven tracks of “Home Again: Live Sessions” sees the artist eschew completely the dense electronics and guitar work of previous releases in order to focus all his attention on this instrument. Recorded as a series of live sessions in a church in his native Kent, “Home Again” makes it clear that in front of the piano is indeed where Leek feels most at home.
There is nothing particularly experimental or boundary-pushing about this music. Instead, what impresses is Leek’s ear for a good tune, the sensitivity of his playing, and well-craed, imaginative arrangements. There is a childlike simplicity and sense of wonder to tracks such as opener “Un” and “Snow Tale #1”, contrasting with more driving and rhythmically complex pieces such as the Nymanesque “Trois/London Bridge, Wednesday, 5.30PM”. In delicate, gentlyflowing closing track “Breaking Down” a mastery of tempo, timbre and dynamics is put to magical, moving effect. To me, the sound of a solo piano played with such devotion is inevitably timeless,
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as though it could have floated in though the door of a reverie. In this sense the pieces become old photographs of times gone by, and the homecoming of the album title is an experience of remembrance rather than actual return. One wonders if these recordings are an interesting side project for Leek, or whether their penchant for melody and clarity will find its way into future releases. Either way, “Home Again” is a clear and rewarding demonstration of an aspect of his talent that could easily have gone unnoticed. - Nathan Thomas
MARISSA NADLER S/T
The alchemy is still there, as are the pearls and the alabaster skin, the bibles and the rifles, but she is no longer a shadow, a spectre looming in the gloaming...
The brooding air of Marissa Nadler’s first three albums of Gothic tales and murder ballads was carefully sealed in a cedar box and tucked quietly away for her fourth album Little Hell, as a more expansive and outward-reaching sound was employed. This self-titled album takes the artist further down this path – far away from the dark woods where the freak-folk danced and into the arms of the mainstream. Almost. The thing is, unlike her earliest songs, I can imagine some of these being tackled by other singers, stars even. I’m not going to name names – I’m not the finger-pointing type – but there’s just something more accessible about these tunes, more so even than its predecessor which many heralded as her breakthrough album. This time around, you can almost smell their appeal. Some songs, like The Sun Always Reminds Me of You and Baby, I Will Leave You in the Morning, already sound like ready-made standards. Or maybe they just sound like songs you’ve heard playing on the radio. Whether this is a good thing or not is, of course, down to the listener. What defines this transcendence is hard to put your finger on. Perhaps it’s the music, though I’m not convinced, for it is not drastically different to the previous album. It retains the gentle, ethereal vibe that is Nadler’s way, all melancholy strings, plucked and stroked, lovingly augmented by Carter Tanton’s delicate arrangements, yet it does seem richer, simpler, and certainly less crepuscular, less haunted than her earlier efforts. Where the instrumentation on her first few albums was sparse and light as a spider’s web,
now it feels rounder, fuller, and no longer threatens to blow away with the slightest gust of wind. I don’t want to alarm you, like I say, it’s really isn’t too dissimilar to Little Hell, but in amongst the strummed guitar and lush pedal steel of The Sun Always Reminds Me of You there is a clearly discernable drum roll poking through. Even this weird apparition though is negligible when compared to the Cocteau Twins-y anomaly, Mary Comes Alive, from said previous album, so please, please don’t worry. Seriously though, the most striking thing about this latest release is Nadler herself: she sounds so assured, like she’s found a place where she belongs. There is no hesitation; rather her fragility has been replaced with a confidence and a selfbelief that is almost tangible. Her voice, still dreamily reminiscent of Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval and tender as the heart, is oen bare here whereas before it was cloaked in thick layers of reverb. Gone too is much of the eccentric otherworldliness and the reliance upon in-depth character portrayals that she seemed previously to hide behind. Most tellingly on The Sun Always Reminds Me of You, Nadler admits “The sun will turn my hands to gold more than any alchemist.” It’s strange to talk of a new found boldness in these terms, particularly considering that the more personal, self-reflective lyrics are so oen filled with regret and loss, but to these ears there is definitely something going on. I daren’t call it maturity because I don’t want to be condescending and also it makes me sound like an old fart, but it’s something like that.
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Maybe this confidence has something to do with the way this record came about. For last November, Nadler joined that growing band of artists, who have turned their back on the Man and taken the reins of their own career, by independently raising the money needed to record and produce this album via the funding platform Kickstarter (similar to the PledgeMusic scheme that has attracted the likes of Gang of Four and Cornershop recently). So successful was Nadler’s campaign that she raised the required $11,000 target within the first week. To know that you have such eager support must surely boost one’s confidence. Whether this had anything to do with the final product though, only the artist can tell. Speculation and guesswork aside, this is a lovely album of beautifully-craed and moving songs that promises to introduce the former ‘mistress of the murder ballad’ to a broader audience and wider acceptance. I know it’s been said before, but with Marissa Nadler the album, Marissa Nadler the artist becomes a real contender. Yes, the alchemy is still there, as are the pearls and the alabaster skin, the bibles and the rifles, but she is no longer a shadow, a spectre looming in the gloaming. No longer singing down into her chest, Nadler is now singing from the tree tops, up into the skies where the birds whip and dive; out past the hills toward the oceans and the rising tides… I hope she’s ready for the big time because that might just be where she’s heading. - Graham Seon
SACRED HARP
THE A. LORDS
APPARITIONS AT THE KENMORE PLANTATION
S/T
What is Americana?
What does it mean to use the sounds of birds and of weather as part of nearly every track of an album of music? In the case of The A.Lords’ new self-titled release, it would seem to be an attempt to bring the music closer to nature, to locate its source and its inspiration in the natural environment…
Though a dictionary may define the term as objects, art or music which are seen as typically American, a number of artists have found there to be something more within the phrase, something romantic, which dates back to an America far older than the United States. Daniel Bachman appears to be one such artist and while recording under the name of Sacred Harps, Bachman utilises steel string guitar, banjo and even sitar to impart a sound which belies his mere twenty one years of age. Perhaps it is his home town of Fredericksburg, VA which has imbued something of its history and tradition in the artist; Situated on the Rappahannock River, Fredericksburg was settled in the late 17th Century and named aer the son of King George II of England. Living through the best and worst of what the American experience offered, the state was home to colonists, slaves and eight US presidents over the centuries. With this sense of the past in mind, one cannot help but attach extra weight to The Kenmore Plantation’s unmistakably rural American sound, provoking romantic images of the US landscape, its peoples and traditions. The album opens with Feast Of The Green Corn and aer a halting intro, the upbeat finger-picking steel string guitar number makes for an unfathomably easy listen of skilful fretboard work. The track contains echos of the late, great John Fahey, but while that fingerpicking guitarist has le numerous similar artists following in his wake, Bachman takes the spirit of Fahey’s own vision of Americana without copying the substance, striving toward greater exploration of original sounds. Brother Green highlights this originality by departing from the previous number’s style with an abstract, experimental dirge, containing long reverb-heavy drones and strikingly mournful vocal harmonies. Before long, Bachman changes gear once again, not allowing the listener to settle on one theme or mood. This jolting of styles makes for a refreshing listen and sets Apparitions At The Kenmore Plantation aside from other likeminded works. Bachman names the third track aer the ancient Rappahannock river and the nimble guitar work is reminiscent of early Meatpuppets material. The artist continues to move from one instrument and genre to the next, while retaining cohesion and a strong overall theme.
The choice of acoustic instruments, gentle major-key harmonies, and relaxed tempi would also seem a call to return to a simpler way of life, a state of being more in touch with the world that hums and sings all around us. Guitar, piano and glockenspiel meander and jig through the album’s ten tracks, joined now and then by voices human and avian. The press release lists gardens, churches, a summerhouse and a barn as recording locations, and the occasional pattering of rain and the creaking of barn doors are allowed to bleed into the record. The result is the perfect soundtrack to an English summertime. But how realistic is this picture of nature that is being painted? Where is the violence and destruction we know is part of the environment? The chaos, the randomness, the tendency towards entropy? Does the nature in the picture really exist, or is it constructed, like the English countryside painted by Constable to hang in the drawing rooms of the newly urbanised industrial class? Is ‘nature’ really how we think we’d want the physical environment around us to be, an imagined primeval source that is in fact imposed in hindsight? A kind of retrospective utopia? Ah, but the music is so beautiful, so blissful, so far away from the actual physical world we’re happily destroying, and that will probably take us down with it… A timeless charm of summer and Englishness, a natural harmony that has always been and always will be… And as the gentle lullaby of “Pyewacket’s Nest” draws the album to a close with the tinkle of a music box, one finds it so easy to dri off into a dream… - Nathan Thomas
Apparitions At The Kenmore Plantation is an album of subtly upliing spirit, not in any typically happy sense, but in the way it depicts the grandeur and timelessness of an indifferent and unchanging nature. With a powerful theme and flawless execution, Daniel Bachman paints a vivid picture of his own thoughts and experiences, his own Americana. - Adam Williams
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